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Book ,G:^9» 

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C0Fk1^IG}IT DEPOSIT. 



The Assurance of Faith. 



By 
WILLIAM W. GUTH, 

President College of 
the Paclflc. 



Let us draw near with a true heart in 
full assurance of faith, — Hebrews 10:22. 



JENNINGS AND GEAHAM 
EATON AND MAINS, 



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OOPYRIC^HT. 1911, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM. 






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)CI.A295174 



®0 

TO WHOM 

I TALKED IN TERMS 

OF THESE 

PAGES. 



PREFACE. 

Faith has its assurance even more than 
sight. It is like the sensitized plate which 
the astronomer places in his camera and 
exposes before the heavens, fnll of visible 
stars, to catch and reproduce the invisible. 
With the eye of faith man looks at the 
things that are seen and sees the things 
that can not be seen with the eye of sight. 
The astronomer would have but a partial 
knowledge of the stellar universe if he 
could not fix by photography the worlds in- 
visible even to the eye looking through the 
strongest telescope. So man's knowledge 
would be sadly incomplete if he could not 
fix by faith the worlds invisible even to 
the strongest telescope of the intellect. 
It is in this invisible world we live. It 

3 



PEEFACE. 

is our waking realm. TKere thought and 
aspiration and love have their rightful and 
only reign. There we emerge from the 
chrysalis of matter into the atmosphere of 
mind, — the supreme, the creating, the 
dominating Mind. And our minds can re- 
spond to and be moved upon by this Mind 
until they hold in firm grasp the meaning 
of life and destiny. 

We walk by sight ; we progress by faith. 
By sight we must pick out our way weari- 
somely, and are never sure we are right, 
for we have only our imperfect eyes as a 
help. By faith we can leap by leagues into 
the circumference of truth, and we despair 
not of reaching the center because of its at- 
tractive forces pulling us on. To change 
the figure, we make our assumptions by 
faith and mount up with wings as eagles. 
We recognize that these assumptions must 
be tested, so we slacken our pace and run, 
but are not weary. We move more slowly 

4 



PEEFACE. 

as we undertake to prove all things we 
would hold fast, and hence walk, but do 
not faint. The assumption puts us in the 
region of certainty. By intellectual in- 
quiry we can find our immediate where- 
abouts. Faith is to reason what a means 
of conveyance is to a journey ^s end. Faith 
carries us to reason, and not reason to 
faith. We study to give a reason for the 
faith that is in us. It is faith that impels 
us to reason. 

In the following pages I have endeav- 
ored to emphasize the part faith plays in 
our being. In various ways, and with some 
repetition, I have dwelt upon, first, the nec- 
essary, underlying assumption of the per- 
sonality of God, using the term as signi- 
fying the Being who lives and labors and 
loves, who actualized and actualizes Him- 
self in mankind, and who fully revealed 
His nature to us in Jesus the dhrist; and 
second, the reality and sufficiency of man's 

5 



PREFACE. 

mind, his ability to receive and compre- 
hend the truth of God, and his need of a 
submissive spirit in order to understand 
himself as well as the Almighty and live 
a life worth while. I have sought to make 
the papers more concrete by basing the 
thought of each upon some incident or say- 
ing of Holy Writ. What is here said is 
the substance of a series of talks given at 
various times before student assemblies 
with the hope of strengthening youth in 
firm reasons for religious and spiritual 
striving and of establishing the cause for 
an abiding conviction in the assurance of 
faith. 

To give credit to all who have influenced 
my thinking is impossible. Fellow-stu- 
dents of Borden P. Bowne, however, will 
not fail to note my great indebtedness to 
him for what is good in this book. 

WILLIAM W. GUTH. 
San Jose, October 26, 1910. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I. The Ki:5^gdom of Truth, - - 11 

II. The I2h"tiolability of Truth, - 23 

III. Symbols of Spiritual Truth, - 40 

IV. The Temporal and the Eterjtal, 58 
V. Approaches to God, - - - 73 

VI. God's Way Natural, - - - 90 
VII. The Beliefs of Unbelief, - 108 

VIII. God Besting, 127 

IX. The Dialogue With God, - 147 

X. On Holy Ground, - - - - 162 

XL Christianity in the Vernacular, 1T6 

XII. The Valley Between, - - 190 

XIII. Life's Counterpoise, - - - 205 

XIV. And Another Shall Gird Thee, 221 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 



% 

THE KINGDOM OF TRUTH. 

Pilate was interested in Jesus only as an 
enemy of the Roman State. A King whose 
Kingdom was not of this world conld do 
no harm to Caesar. He was willing to set 
Jesus at liberty. He conld not disguise 
his contempt, however, for a Man who 
claimed to be a Witness to the truth. 
Abruptly closing his interview with Him, 
he said, ^^What is truth T^ and then gave 
Jesus no opportunity to reply. Pilate was 
feonvinced there was no reply to be given. 
The verdict of history, however, is that 
Jesus knew something about the truth 
worth hearing. His Kingdom, founded on 
the truth, has been more lasting than 
the kingdom represented by Pilate. He 
claimed to be the Supreme Witness to the 

11 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

truth. His claim is well founded. For as 
we dwell upon His life we find it squaring 
with truth in all its elements. 

To begin with, truth is in and through 
all things fundamental. When we speak 
of a circle or straight line, we speak of 
something that is absolutely true. We pay 
little attention to straight lines and circles 
as we find them taking form in some or- 
dinary dwelling house or humble chapel. 
We expect a building to be true. If it 
were not so we might stop and wonder at 
the incompetence of the man who built the 
house and comment upon the danger to 
those living therein. But when we see 
stone piled upon stone, regular and true in 
line and curve, until a cathedral or a pal- 
ace stands before us, we stop and marvel 
at the mind and skill of man. Truth is 
there hardened and set in every inch of 
stone and wood. The architect knew that 
only thus would his structure stand. When 
he drew his plans he started every curve, 

13 



THE KINGDOM OF TRUTH. 

every line trne, that when joined together 
the truth would appear in one unbroken 
succession, and the image of his mind, 
which he had transferred to paper, take 
form in the real cathedral. Had he 
planned but the humble chapel he would 
have planned in the same way, for he 
knew that the forces in nature are true at 
the center and that if he would have his 
building stand with these he must relate 
it to them. We look with peculiar wonder 
upon the leaning tower, but with no desire 
to have such a structure duplicated. An 
architect does not study how he can defy 
the law of gravitation and make a building 
fourteen feet out of plumb stand. He 
studies how to bring his mind and his work 
into harmony with the truth. So we pro- 
ceed in life. We plan for our house of 
character just as the architect plans for 
his cathedral, by making use of the true 
and relating ourselves to it. There are 
many leaning towers in the lives of men 

13 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

and women, but no real man will sit down 
to study how far from the plumb of right- 
eousness he can build his character and 
maintain his own respect and that of his 
fellows. His natural impulse is to build 
true and straight. This is so because truth 
is at the bottom. It is a kingdom on which 
all other kingdoms rest. It was in this 
realm that Jesus said He was Euler. He 
proves His sovereignty every time a man 
ventures to relate his life to His. It is as 
true as a straight line or a circle, and no 
one can be led in a crooked path by fol- 
lowing Him. There are many criticisms 
made on the teaching and claims of Jesus. 
But we have never seen nor heard a state- 
ment made by one who followed Jesus that 
he was deceived or led astray. "With Jesus 
as the Architect no man can rear a leaning 
tower in his life. According to His plumb 
line every square and surface is true. He 
and truth are fundamental. 

Truth is also its own best expression. 
14 



THE KINGDOM OF TEUTH. 

It would be difficult to explain to a cMld 
what a circle is without showing him one. 
Once he has seen a circle he will talk un- 
derstandingly about it without being able 
technically to describe it. And to many of 
us a circle remains simply a circle. It is 
its own best expression. We would be put 
to a test to define it offhand in terms of 
geometry. We often discern truth without 
being able to define it. One who clearly 
sees the truth needs no choice of words 
to express it. The truth will be in him 
its own best expression. And it will not 
be the man who is speaking, but truth. 
We lose sight of the man, or rather the 
man is lost sight of in the truth. Truth 
has become incarnated in him. He has 
become one with truth. So he must speak. 
With every fiber of muscle and every drop 
of blood he declares, ' ' Here I stand ; I can 
not do otherwise, so help me God." For 
truth he makes a vicarious sacrifice. The 
:world may howl about him ; self -constituted 

15 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

judges may condemn; and self-appointed 
executioners crucify. But he stands su- 
preme, the self-expression of truth, know- 
ing that truth will prevail. So Jesus 
Christ is His own best expression. He 
has worked Himself by His subtle power 
and commanding force into the lives of the 
world's great men, and hence into its his- 
tory, its art, its music, its literature. We 
see and hear and read Him in every mas- 
terpiece of art and music and poetry which 
has had Him for its subject. These with 
the Gospel record form the composite of 
the living Christ, which is ineffaceable. 
"We see and recognize Him in the life of 
every saintly-minded man and woman. He 
is incarnated in goodness, purity, love, as 
these find actuality in human words and 
deeds. 

Furthermore, truth can not be arrested 
in its progress. We may pile a mountain 
of error upon it to dam its course and 
throttle its life, as now and then a moun- 

16 



THE KINGDOM OF TEUTH. 

tain of earth will loosen itself in the Alps 
and completely block the course of a rivu- 
let. But in a few days here and there a 
drop of water will begin to trickle out of 
the ground, then a few seemingly discon- 
nected threads of water appear, which in 
a little while become united ; then the earth 
begins to melt, the rivulet throws off its 
grave-clothes and proceeds into life, prais- 
ing God and blessing man as before. 
Truth undermines the mountains of error 
and finds its way to freedom. It has ever 
worked itself through, and men have seen 
it emerging out of the chaos. So has Jesus 
gone on unmolested. As we shall see later, 
no opposition was able to arrest His 
progress. Death itself could not hold Him. 
He is as present in the world to-day as 
when He walked the hills and valleys of 
Palestine. 

Again, man instinctively bows before 
the truth. He sees it, he is overwhelmed, 

he worships it. We lay aside a book which 
2 ly 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

has revealed the truth to us, and we tacitly 
assent to it. We talk to a man of com- 
manding genins, and all our little knowl- 
edge fails us, we bow before and worship 
him. We are not made smaller, but larger, 
for having seen and heard him. So of 
Jesus. The wise men uttered a prophetic 
word when they said, ' ' Show us the Child, 
for we have seen His star in the East and 
have come to worship Him.'' They bow 
down before Him and lay their gifts at 
His feet. Peter says, ^^Lord, to whom 
shall we go ; Thou hast the words of eternal 
life?" The Greeks say to Philip, ^^Sir, 
we would see Jesus." Charles Lamb put 
the seal on the words of the wise men in 
an assembly of scholars who were discuss- 
ing how they should greet certain great 
men of the past were they suddenly to 
come into their presence. If Homer or 
Shakespeare should come, they would all 
rise. Some one asked, doubtless irrever- 
ently, ^^But what if Jesus should come?" 

18 



THE KINGDOM OF TEUTH. 

Lamb replied: ^^0, tliat would be differ- 
ent. If He should come we should all 
kneel. ' ^ 

Again, truth is thrilling. There is no 
enthusiasm so stimulating and real as that 
engendered by the perception of a great 
truth. Men are ^^ beside themselves,'' we 
say, as they enthusiastically rave over 
some great truth new to them. They are 
beside themselves because they stand, as 
it were, and look at the truth in themselves 
approaching and uniting with the truth at 
the center of the universe. It is as two 
worlds coming together. The sight is so 
overwhelming that man for the moment is 
rendered almost incoherent of speech. It 
is a day of Pentecost for him on which he 
hears and understands a strange language. 
"When the French scholars had tested New- 
ton 's discovery of the law of gravitation, 
and Newton was computing the results and 
saw his theory was approaching a fact, he 
became strangely excited. The figures, the 

19 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

room, began to dance before his eyes; be 
was undone, and needed to call another to 
finish the computation. ^^Why the agita- 
tion?'' asks Emerson. ^^ Because when 
Newton saw in the fall of an apple to the 
ground the fall also of the earth to the 
sun, of the sun and all suns to the center, 
that perception was accompanied by a 
spasm of delight by which the intellect 
greets a fact more immense still, a fact 
really universal— holding in intellect as in 
matter, in morals as in intellect — that atom 
draws to atom throughout nature, and 
truth to truth throughout spirit.'' Men 
of all ages have been similarly thrilled as 
they have grasped the claims of Jesus in 
regard to the truth. On the day of Pente- 
cost the many who went almost wild at 
the perception of the truth as revealed by 
Jesus Christ were accused of being filled 
with new wine. Before Agrippa, Saint 
Paul became so excited as he preached 
Christ to this kingly audience, that Festus 



THE KINGDOM OF TRUTH. 

cried to him with a loud voice: ^^Paul, 
thou art beside thyself. Too much learn- 
ing doth make thee mad.'' Luther rose 
from his knees as he was climbing the 
Scala Santa in Rome and rushed down the 
steps almost in a frenzy when the great 
truth of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ 
burst upon him. The Quakers had their 
convulsions, the Swedenborgians their il- 
luminations, the Moravians and Pietists 
their raptures, the Calvinists their quick- 
enings, and the Methodists their revivals 
and experiences, simply because ^^of that 
shudder of awe and delight with which the 
individual soul always mingles with the 
universal soul. ' ' This universal soul these 
men considered to be the Christ. For 
truth and Christ to them were one. He 
was the true Witness to the truth. He was 
a King and His Kingdom was the truth. 
These and many other analogies are 
there between truth and Jesus. ^^It is only 
by being loyal and helpful to the truth/' 

21 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

said Lowell, ^^that men learn at last how 
loyal and helpful she can be to them. ' ' It 
is only by being loyal and helpful to Jesus 
Christ that we learn how helpful and loyal 
He can be to us. ^^If ye continue in My 
Word, then ye are My disciples indeed, and 
ye shall know the truth and the truth shall 
make you free. ' ' 



22 



11. 

THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

There were several attempts raade to do 
Jesus bodily harm. In the beginning of 
His ministry these efforts were the result 
of a violent impulse stirred by some truth 
Jesus spoke which was not agreeable to 
His hearers ; toward the close of His min- 
istry, and because of truths Jesus repeat- 
edly uttered which were distasteful to the 
Jewish leaders, the attacks took the form 
of a well-designed plan to do away with 
Him. All these attempts came to naught, 
and for a reason Jesus Himself gave — 
"M.J time is not yet come." Wlien His 
time was come they took Him and led Him 
forth to execution, but only because He 
was obedient to His Father's wiU. 

23 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

At the very beginning of His ministry, 
the first time and, as it happened, also the 
last that He appeared publicly in His 
own home, the people were filled with 
wrath when He told them the truth about 
themselves. ^'And they rose up, and cast 
Him forth out of the city, and led Him 
to the brow of the hill whereon their city 
was built, that they might throw Him down 
headlong. But He, passing through the 
midst of them, went His way.'^ 

There was something about His person 
that kept the hands of men off Him when 
they would have done Him harm. It was 
as impossible to soil or obstruct Him as 
it is to sully or retard a sunbeam. The 
men of those days could raise obstacles to 
keep Jesus out of their midst, but they 
could not keep His influence from spread- 
ing. When they would take Him, He 
passed through the midst of them and went 
His way. 

As we see Jesus going through that 
34 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

angry crowd and continuing His way un- 
harmed we are impressed with the signifi- 
cance of the act and follow Him, not only 
down to Capernaum and hither and thither 
over Palestine, on up to Golgotha and the 
cross, but also from Joseph's tomb out into 
the wide world, striding over the centuries, 
meeting every obstacle and going through 
it unharmed, until the Man is lost in the 
truth, and the truth which He promul- 
gates prevails ; in a word, until Jesus and 
His truth become one. We study Him and 
He leads us out into the truth; we search 
for the truth and it leads us back to Him. 
He going through all hostile and warring 
elements unharmed is but the figure of His 
truth penetrating all error and proceeding 
on its conquering way. 

When we look at truth in this light we 
find its analogy with Jesus holding good. 
The Jews did not receive His message be- 
cause they were not prepared for it. This 
lack of preparation was their own fault. 

25 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

They did not want to accept His teaching. 
They were so engrained with their own 
doctrine that the least suggested variance 
from it was an affront too great for them 
to bear. So they cried, ^^Away with this 
blasphemer!" They did not stop to in- 
quire whether or not they in their manner 
of belief and mode of living had really be- 
come blasphemers themselves and were 
desecrating the Holy Word of God. They 
were too blinded and too perverse to study 
the teachings of the Scriptures calmly and 
candidly, and compare them, first with 
their own doctrine and practice, and then 
with the life and teachings of Jesus, to 
see whether He or they were at fault. It 
would have taken too much of their time 
and robbed them of too much of their ease 
to have pursued this course. They were 
satisfied to look to their own leaders for 
authority and like them, too, to live a life 
of selfishness and abandon which bordered 
very near upon the dissolute. Jesus could 

26 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

never have reached these people. Their 
hearts were hardened. All He could do 
was to pass through their midst and go 
on His way. 

There were others, however, who re- 
ceived Jesns gladly and accepted His mes- 
sage. These listened to His word with 
open ears and at first hand, and not with 
a wall of precedent and tradition between 
them and Him. They were looking for 
life, not dogma; they were willing to judge 
according to the spirit and not on the 
technicality of the law. They were simple 
fishermen, not trained jurists. They could 
see with the open eyes of life because they 
were not blinded by rule or resolution. 
They were then, and they will remain for- 
ever, the pattern of open and broad mind- 
edness, the result of an honest effort to 
receive the truth, from whatever quarter 
it comes, even although it be despised 
Nazareth. 

As the Jews refused Jesus' message 
27 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

because they were not ready or willing to 
throw off the crust of fixed doctrinal pro- 
cedure and belief, so do we find at various 
epochs of history a similar disinclination 
to investigate and accept the truth. Take, 
for example, a most familiar illustration: 
the revolution in thought the Copernican 
astronomy necessitated. That the sun 
moved and the earth stood still was the 
belief of the most enlightened men until the 
famous Prussian, only a little more than 
three hundred and eighty years ago, told 
them otherwise. Here was a new phase 
of truth, a message from the heavens, 
which made the rulers of the Church so 
angry that they would have cast it down 
headlong over the brow of the hill whereon 
their intellectual city was built. But pass- 
ing through their midst, it went its way. 
The Church could put a ban upon all who 
believed that the earth revolved around the 
sun ; it could, for instance, compel the great 
Galileo by inquisition to abjure his ac- 

28 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

ceptance of this important discovery, but 
it could not arrest the word of truth. 

The Church leaders sought to hush up 
the truth which revolutionized the thought 
of men because they were not prepared for 
it. Their system was so small and so nar- 
row that it had absolutely no expansive 
potentiality. So far could they go. "When 
they came to the edge they must either 
pitch themselves down into the abyss of 
darkness, or build up barriers on the 
border of their belief which would keep 
them from falling over and also give them 
a purchase to throw all who did not agree 
with them into the bottomless gulf. The 
message of Copernicus was a ^^new'^ 
truth. It set all their cherished dogmas, 
all their fixed forms of belief, in disorder ; 
to accept it would necessitate the complete 
readjustment of their accepted views. 
Tradition would have to be discredited. 
The ponderous volumes which had been 
based upon it would not even be good ma- 

39 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

terial for fuel. It is not to be wondered 
at that the Church fathers were alarmed 
and were out hunting for heretics. The 
tranquil calm of the monasteries dared not 
be disturbed or the peace of the communi- 
cants upset. For if Corpernicus was right 
the Church was wrong. What a calamity 
this would have been: the Church forced 
to admit it was in error! 

The truth went on its way, however, 
quietly and persistently ; unconcerned with 
the opposition and not hindered by it. 
There were minds prepared to receive it, 
minds which, even at the risk of persecu- 
tion and death, would not shrink from look- 
ing for truth wherever it could be found. 
These minds — and let us not forget to em- 
phasize the fact — represented the true 
spirit of the Church and enabled the 
Church in a marvelously quick and a won- 
drously quiet way to adjust itself to this 
stupendous revolution. As a result we 
have an immeasurably expanded world; a 

30 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

God raised to the millionth power in wis- 
dom and skill, worthy of man's profound- 
est thought and veneration ; and man him- 
self lifted into an exalted dignity not to 
be measured because of his prerogatives 
and possibilities. 

Or, turning from the field of astronomy 
to that of biology : It was only a few years 
ago that the theory of evolution was be- 
ing everywhere decried and denounced 
from the pulpit. Darwin's name was 
anathema in every devout home. Even 
two such books as '^The Ascent of Man" 
and ^^ Natural Law in the Spiritual 
"World," by so deeply a religious and help- 
ful a writer as Henry Drummond were 
looked upon as an incarnation of evil. 
Many a good minister was crying, '^0, that 
men should put such poison in the minds 
of our youth to steal away their religious 
susceptibilities!" What were the facts? 
Darwin vitalized a theory of far-reaching 
importance to all forms of life, whether 

31 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

vegetable, animal, or human. This theory 
had a religious significance of which Dar- 
win did not even dream. He neither ap- 
preciated nor understood it, and had the 
religious aspects of his theory been left 
to him for their solution, faith in an all- 
wise and provident God would have been 
annihilated. But there were others who 
saw the bearing of this new phase of truth, 
a phase which could not be routed by pul- 
pit storming. They began to apply it in 
the religious field and to give it its proper 
place and significance. One of the greatest 
of these harmonists in his day was Drum- 
mond, a recognized scientist, a deeply re- 
ligious man, and a fervent teacher. He 
took the theory of evolution and applied 
it to the spiritual life with the result that 
instead of causing men to lose their faith, 
he gave them ample field for intelligent 
and consistent belief in the ultimate reali- 
ties. He proclaimed a God who not only 
brought an orderly world out of chaos, but 

33 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

who created man in His own image and 
sent a Christ into the world to help man 
maintain and not mar that image. Evo- 
lution, when rightly understood as a 
method of progression, and not as the 
cause of being, is a vital truth, and as such 
it will pass through all opposition and 
proceed upon its way. It does not attempt 
to solve the fact of creation: it deals 
merely with the ongoing, never with the 
beginning of the world or of the origin of 
man. Hence in no wise does it destroy our 
belief that an eternal God breathed and 
breathes into man the breath of life, and 
that an all-merciful Father cares for and 
watches over him. 

There were some who were not pre- 
pared to receive this new phase of truth 
because they were held fast in the seduc- 
tive arms of tradition and precedent. 
They were not willing to undertake a re- 
adjustment of their mental belief to the 
demands of physical and spiritual fact. 
^ 33 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

To-day there are a few such who continue 
to make a great noise declaiming against 
^'new truth.'' But the real spirit of the 
Church has been quick to recognize and to 
respond to the inevitable. To-day the the- 
ory of evolution, as a divine method of 
procedure, is accepted as a welcome aid 
in the teaching of spiritual truth. Thus 
does truth go on its way unmolested. 
Sooner or later man must bow to it. In 
every era when new discoveries are made, 
and new interpretations are given in all 
lines of thought, and there seems to be 
more or less unsettling of established be- 
liefs and fear is engendered which develops 
into a rage and attempts are made to an- 
nihilate the new views of truth, there is 
only one rule to follow — that laid down by 
the learned Pharisee and doctor of the law, 
Gamaliel, when the Jews would have put 
Peter and those who were with Mm to 
death. ^'Eefrain from these men and let 
them alone," Gamaliel said, ^^for if their 

34 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

counsel or their work be of men it will be 
overthrown, but if it is of God, ye will not 
be able to overthrow it lest haply ye be 
found to be fighting even against God.'' 
Persecution and bloodshed in the early 
years of Christianity, frenzy and humilia- 
tion in the later years, would have been 
spared had this advice been followed. 
Truth is as immune from all hostile at- 
tack as Jesus was when, passing through 
the midst of that angry mob on the brow 
of Nazareth's hill. He went on His way. 

Jesus went on His way, but it was al- 
ways through opposition. Every advance 
of truth has met the same condition. 
There is always the same disinclination to 
be led by truth as it is perceived in some 
new phase ; the same persistent holding on 
to old forms of belief when these have been 
outgrown; the same stress through which 
Christ's Church must go because some of 
its leaders refuse to walk in the unmistak- 
able light of approved research. ^^Some 

35 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

modern zealots,'' said Dean Swift, more 
than a hundred years ago, ' ' appear to have 
no better knowledge of truth nor better 
manner of judging it than by counting 
noses." As though a vote for or against 
truth would decide anything. Again it is 
to be noted, as Goethe has said, that it is 
^^ always the individual not the age that 
stands up for truth." The pages of his- 
tory show us not a Church or a people or 
a nation holding for progressive truth, but 
an individual in the Church or State or 
among the people. ^^The State must fol- 
low and not lead the character and prog- 
ress of the citizen," declared Emerson. 
This is true of any organized institution. 
There always is the danger of men becom- 
ing tangled up in the rules and technicali- 
ties of administration. 

^VTruth does not conform itself to us." 
If we are not agreeable to it, it passes on 
its way. ^^We must conform ourselves to 
it." What truth is remains a problem. 

36 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

None of ns in the conflicting opinions of 
life may be wise enough to see and grasp 
it. Time is the best revelator of truth. 
After we have climbed a hill we have a 
better knowledge of the country by look- 
ing back over it than we had when coming 
through it. The comprehension of truth, 
however, is not so much a matter of in- 
sight or learning as it is of attitude. "We 
may be utterly unable to grasp the eternal 
truths that lie at the center of Being. And 
yet as we have a right attitude to those 
truths we unconsciously become a part of 
their unfolding. The Almighty has created 
a world obedient to His command. The 
psalmist, speaking from the dictates of his 
soul, no less truly declares this than the 
scientist who lays before us the result of 
his experimentation. The Almighty has 
also created man, not who must, but who 
may be obedient to Him. Man's concep- 
tion and perception of the truth depend 
on the ratio of his obedience to the Al- 

37 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

mighty. He is not left without a guide 
as to what is obedience. There are cer- 
tain dictates and promptings of his inner 
nature which declare to him in no uncer- 
tain way whether or not he has been obe- 
dient. The certainty of this monition de- 
pends upon the alacrity with which man 
follows it. With him rests the power of 
keeping it keenly awake to all his needs 
or allowing it to become blunted and dull. 
As he obeys he finds voices, not only within, 
but without, that speak to him and he can 
follow with firm footsteps upon a well- 
defined way. 

Obedience, conformity, must be the at- 
titude of man to the truth. As he thus 
walks his horizon will be a widening one, 
man and nature will spread out the pages 
of truth before him, unto him will be given 
the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The 
parables of this world will be clear to him, 
for he is within the Kingdom and can un- 
derstand the symbol of its language. To 

38 



THE INVIOLABILITY OF TEUTH. 

change the figure, he is in the temple of 
life and can look upon the right side of the 
pictures in the windows which to them who 
are without mean nothing. If we have this 
attitude to the truth, all other things which 
we are able to bear will be added unto us. 
If we have not this attitude, the Lord of 
all truth will surely pass through our midst 
and go on His way. 



39 



SY^CBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TEUTH. 

One of the most pronounced facts in the 
stndy of religions phenomena is man ever 
striving to know Grod, The face of God is 
veiled, His lips are mute: yet man seeks 
to lift the veil and speak with Grod face 
to face. Here is a task which may seem as 
impossible as the task of emptying the 
ocean. Yet man persists in his qnest. Gen- 
erations come and go, centuries wax old 
and are bom, no man or age has dared 
to claim that the limits of the finite have 
been exceeded and the presence of the 
Eternal invaded. Still man pnshes his in- 
quiry: ^^TVhat hath the Lord answered? 
And what hath the Lord said?'' 

A phenomenon so great as this must 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 

have an explanation. We find it in the 
universal concensus of thoughtful men. 
Not the fact of absolutely knowing is the 
principle or final or directive considera- 
tion, but the spirit of trying to know. This 
spirit is the essential element in all our 
thinking and doing, and relegates mere 
knowledge, as such, to the background. 
The quest of knowledge can never end in 
accomplishment, it must express itself as 
an attitude. The ocean of knowledge is 
deep and wide, but man must content him- 
self with his dipperful. In the very atti- 
tude of seeking to know, however, lies 
man's hope. For sufficient unto his needs 
is the knowledge which by striving he will 
be able to control. 

In any investigation the facts must first 
be known and then properly construed. 
The latter is the important thing. In or- 
dinary conversation where the subject 
turns on what another is supposed to have 
said, it is important, of course, to know 

41 



THE ASSUEAXCE OF FAITH. 

wliat was actually said. But even more 
important than what was actually said is 
to learn what was meant. A statement 
may be accurately reported and give a 
certain impression. But associated with 
other statements made at the same time 
the statement may demand quite another 
construction. A few sentences of a con- 
versation taken out of their connection can 
not be made the sole basis of a judgment. 
Again, circumstances may be involved the 
knowledge of which might lead at once to 
the conclusion that what was said was not 
meant. For instance, the person speaking 
might have been under a great mental or 
physical or emotional strain which might 
have colored his words with a different 
meaning; or he may have certain consti- 
tutional peculiarities which need to be 
taken into account in construing the 
^meaning or worth of his words, or his en- 
vironment at home or in business or pro- 
fessional life may be such as to require a 

42 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 

different interpretation of Ms actual 
words. 

We can not depend only upon the actual 
words used for the formation of our judg- 
ments. In fact, it is usual for us to give 
our words a different meaning than the 
dictionaries set forth. To know the ex- 
act meaning of words is no surety that we 
shall grasp the thought they are intended 
to express. For this reason we can not 
translate a foreign language merely with 
a dictionary. We can not repeat in Eng- 
lish what a German or French or Greek 
author has said until we have appreciated 
the spirit in which he was writing. When 
we have entered into his spirit we can 
reproduce his meaning without accurately 
translating his words. Even in our own 
language we may know the dictionary 
meaning of every word a writer uses and 
yet not grasp his thought. This becomes 
quite clear when we take the most simple 
examples. In rhetoric there are certain 

43 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

teclinical terms wMch describe our habitual 
usage of words in other than their usual 
signification. We say, for example, a con- 
tractor employed several new hands, when 
we mean workmen. We have innumerable 
expressions which we use as substitutions 
for the word death. But however vague 
they may be so far as the dictionary is 
concerned, we readily understand the 
meaning intended. One reason why slang 
is so expressive is simply because certain 
words and expressions ridiculous in them- 
selves are given a figurative sense that 
aptly apply to certain conditions. For ex- 
ample, the antics of a goat attributed to a 
man who is always interrupting a conver- 
sation. 

Much of our poetry would be devoid of 
meaning if we were unable to understand 
the figurative and derivative use of lan- 
guage. Take the oft-quoted first line of 
the poem, ^^ Ships that pass in the night." 
What does the fact say? Two ships meet 

44 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 

in the dark of night, signal each other, and 
pass on each her own way. What does the 
fact mean? Simply that thus we meet in 
life, live together for a greater or less 
period of time, and then separate, hoping 
some day to anchor in the same port. Take 
those inspired words of Tennyson, ^^ Cross- 
ing the Bar.'^ "What does he mean when 
he says, ^^May there be no moaning of the 
bar when I put out to sea?" or 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark ; 
And may there be no sadness of 
farewell, 

When I embark ; 

For the' from out our bourne of 
Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crost the bar. 

If we take his words in their dictionary 
meaning we should be as images of stone 
and wood that have eyes but see not, and 

45 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ears but hear not, and hands but handle 
not. Or take those equally inspired words 
of Eobert Louis Stevenson : 

In winter I get up at night 
And dress by yellow candle light; 
In summer quite the other way, 
I have to go to bed by day. 

I have to go to bed and see 
The birds still hopping on the tree 
Or hear the grown-up people's feet 
Still going past me in the street. 

And does it not seem hard to you 
When all the sky is clear and blue, 
And I should like so much to play, 
To have to go to bed by day ? 

If we read these lines with the dictionary 
or with the memory of our cliilclhood when 
we were put to bed that way, we will have 
a meaning of the poem, but only a super- 
ficial meaning. If we read the lines with 
a knowledge of the man who wrote them: 
see him fighting a losing battle from his 
very youth against .that dread disease con- 

46 



SYMBOLS OF SPIEITUAL TEUTH. 

sumption, see him working with a deter- 
mination and an indef atigability until work 
to him had become as natural as play, see 
him taken away in the summertime of life 
when he could still see the happy birds 
hopping on the tree, and hear the grown-up 
people's feet passing by, the feet of those 
far older than he in years who still had 
strength and long life before them — the 
whole poem takes on a different meaning. 

And does it not seem hard to you 
When all the sky is clear and blue, 
And I should like so much to play, 
To haye to go to bed by day ? 

"What the poet says is important, what 
he means is more so, but most of all is 
the disposition of the reader to understand 
what he says and appreciate what he 
means. For back of the man who writes 
is the spirit that prompts the mind and 
heart to appreciate, and the spirit of the 
one must be in sympathy with the spirit 
of the other. The poet must have a feel- 

47 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ing of what is imiversal in the sonl-life of 
other men and the other men must have 
a feeling of that universal, that eternal in 
themselves, else the poet can not write or 
the layman read. 

I have said sufficient, doubtless, to show 
that our language is a picture language, 
full of images and symbols, and that 
we can not understand it unless we know 
the meaning of the images and pictures 
and sjTnbols. The pictures on the Egyp- 
tian monuments look quite infantile to us, 
but when we begin to appreciate what the 
birds and lions and men and crowns and 
crosses and leaves stand for we begin to 
read a language with wonderful expressive 
power and marvel at the high degree of 
culture in that day. So the essayist and 
story teller and public speaker win their 
great triumphs to-day as they are able to 
draw word pictures for their readers and 
auditors and by this means reach the soul- 
depths of men and women. Massillon, the 

48 



SYMBOLS OF SPIEITUAL TEUTH. 

great French preacher, by drawing a word- 
picture of the imminent and inevitable 
doom for the sinful made the courtiers of 
Louis XIV leap to their feet in terror, feel- 
ing that the judgment day was actually 
upon them. William Dawson, an early 
Wesleyan preacher, pictured so realistic- 
ally the return of the prodigal from the 
far country that his hearers involuntarily 
turned their eyes to the door expecting to 
see him enter. Father Taylor, as has been 
so often related, described a storm at sea 
with such wonderful effect that a sailor in 
the audience jumped up and exclaimed, 
*^For God's sake, man the lifeboat!'' A 
strong, impassioned plea was recently 
made for the dignity and majesty and 
sovereignty of the laws of one of our Com- 
monwealths against irresponsible agita- 
tion. These, among others, were the words 
used: ^^As well say that the mighty crags 
of the mountains heaved up from the gran- 
ite of the bosom of the earth itself shall 
* 49 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

yield and give way and be swept into ob- 
livion by the clouds that form and drift 
and drive at tlie behest of the wind over 
the peaks of these eternal hills." And 
what do we see ? As the granite mountains 
stand there firmly imbedded in spite of the 
winds and storms that blow over their sum- 
mits, so stand law and order and justice, 
rearing their summits to the eternal 
heavens, while the noise and clamor of 
irresponsible and sensational agitation 
break over them and die as the mists. 

This leads us to our point: The sym- 
bols of spiritual truth. Our religious vo- 
cabulary, just as the other words we use, 
is made up of images. We take our ideas 
from the material and visible things about 
us to express the invisible and immate- 
rial. As the Egyptians in the infancy of 
language drew pictures of an eagle or a 
lion or a lotus or papyrus branch to ex- 
press their ideas, and as we teach children 
their lessons in a similar way with objects 

50 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TEUTH. 

and words of derived meaning, so is spir- 
itual truth inculcated, and in order to learn 
we must become as children. An elaborate 
discussion of the process is not necessary. 
What has already been said is suggestive 
of all that can be said on the question. 
Our religious language to-day has refer- 
ence, not to objects and circumstances and 
customs of to-day or even of a century 
ago, but of the time wlien our Bible was 
in the making. The Old Testament de- 
scribes God as a fortress, a dwelling-place 
for His people, a rock, a sun, a shield. He 
covers His saints with His feathers, the 
righteous rest under His wings, they 
abide under His shadow. He walks in the 
garden in the cool of evening to spy out 
an offender. He sits in the heavens and 
laughs at sinners and has them in deri- 
sion. He repents that He made man and 
undertakes to confuse his mind and con- 
found his speech. All these statements 
so far as the dictionary is concerned are 

51 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

misstatements of fact and some of them 
are mutually contradictory. But it would 
be a dull-witted man indeed who should 
not understand their figurative and de- 
rived meaning and be able to form an ade- 
quate idea of what the Old Testament 
writers thought of God. 

In the New Testament the case is some- 
what different. Here the writers were 
striving to set forth the objective value 
of Jesus as the Sa\dor of man, and hence 
needed to use the language and illustra- 
tion of their day. Their language is 
therefore pictorial, dramatic, metaphor- 
ical, relative. The two sources from which 
they draw their illustrations are Jewish 
ceremonial and Eoman law. The altar 
whereon animal sacrifice was made, the 
temple where vows were undertaken and 
obligations performed, the market where 
slaves were redeemed and prisoners were 
ransomed, the cross on which criminals 
were nailed — all play an important part in 

53 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 

the scheme of salvation. Christ is a sac- 
rifice and propitiation for our sins. He 
is the sacrificial Lamb that taketh away 
the sins of the world, He gives His life a 
ransom for many, He dies on the cross 
and hence becomes the Redeemer of the 
world. This language was necessary, and 
is without objection for us to-day if we 
set ourselves to understand it. We do not 
disparage the use of old terms as long as 
they have their proper meaning, and we 
will continue to use them until better and 
clearer words come into use. But we re- 
pudiate these words as soon as they are 
falsely interpreted. A generation ago the 
legal aspect of the atonement was carried 
to such an extent that God was represented 
as sitting as a judge in a courtroom, a 
prisoner guilty of a crime has been con- 
victed, the judge demands the full penalty 
of the law, but his son, innocent and spot- 
less, steps forward and says, ^^ Father, I 
will pay the penalty." And the father 

53 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

executes him in the place of the criminal. 
Such a travesty on divine love and jus- 
tice we can not tolerate. Yet much of 
the discussion on the atonement is vitiated 
hy just such an excrescence of thought as 
this. 

What John and Paul and James and 
Peter and especially the writer to the 
Hebrews wrote is one thing, what they 
meant is quite another, and the spirit in 
which we receive what they wrote and try 
to understand what they said is still an- 
other. Only as we cultivate a right spirit 
do their words become real and vivid and 
life-giving. It is Jesus who helps us to 
cultivate this spirit. To His words we go 
for final direction and authority. We find 
Him, not like the Gospel writers, using 
illustrations from the Jewish Church and 
Eoman law, the meaning of which would 
be limited to their particular time, but 
using illustrations like most of the Old 
Testament writers that are adapted to all 

54 



SYMBOLS OF SPIEITUAL TRUTH. 

times and conditions. He took such terms 
as were familiar and with these He built 
His figures and symbols of spiritual truth. 
He draws analogies between things natural 
and things spiritual, between one, e. g., 
who is negligent and hence left out in the 
cold, dark night, and one who is prudent 
and hence admitted into the brilliantly 
lighted hall and merry feast. With such 
exquisite analogies He ^^ utters things 
which have been hidden from the founda- 
tion of the world. ' ' The wise and the fool- 
ish virgins, the profitable and unprofitable 
servants, the heartless clergy and the char- 
itable Samaritan, Dives and Lazarus, the 
Pharisee and the Publican, the widow's 
mite and the rich man's gift, all explain 
the way of the higher life and set forth 
the laws of God's Kingdom. The facts of 
every-day life reveal the conditions and 
reality of everlasting life and bring God 
to man as a loving and caring Father. 
Jesus is the Supreme Painter of word 
55 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

pictures and thus must spiritual truth 
come to us. Some did not understand 
Him. Even His disciples at times were 
in doubt. But to those who asked He ex- 
plained, and what the Lord said became 
clear. It became clear because there was 
the disposition to hear what was said and 
to understand what was meant. Those who 
had not this spirit could not understand 
Him. He rebuked the Pharisees once with 
the words: ^^Why do ye not understand 
My speech? Even because ye can not hear 
My words.'' They would not stay to cul- 
tivate a sympathetic attitude, and so what 
He said to them was foolishness and blas- 
phemy. If we have not the spirit to hear, 
no wisdom or insight can help us. If we 
have this spirit we need only follow tho 
advice of Jeremiah, ^^Thus shall ye say, 
every one to his neighbor and every one 
to his brother: What hath the Lord an- 
swered and what hath the Lord said?" 
For if we are earnest enough to know the 

56 



SYMBOLS OF SPIRITUAL TEUTH. 

mind and will of God to be diligent in our 
inquiry after Him, we shall be given the 
key to His language and speech and we 
shall be able to read and listen and under- 
stand. We shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make us free. 



57 



IV. 

THE TEMPOEAL AND THE ETEENAL. 

As Jesus is talking with a number of peo- 
ple in the temple at Jerusalem, some one 
attracted by its beauty called attention to 
the goodly stones and ornaments with 
which the temple was adorned. This' re- 
mark doubtless was foreign to the con- 
versation in which Jesus was engaged. 
But He takes up the change of subject as 
another opportunity to point a truth and 
says, ^^As for these things which ye be- 
hold, there shall not be left one stone upon 
another which shall not be thrown down. ' ' 
He is not oblivious to the beauty of the 
imposing structure before Him; nor is He 
unmindful of the impression it made upon 
the beholder, however often He may have 
seen the temple. He is concerned more 
with the purpose for which the temple was 

58 



THE TEMPORAL AND ETERNAL. 

built and turns the thought of His hearers 
to the eternal. That which they saw was 
not permanent. It could not last. Only 
that for which the stones and precious 
ornaments were gathered — the underlying 
spirit of the temple, had any abiding value. 
There was, therefore, a temporal and an 
eternal element which Jesus saw before 
Him. He saw these not only in the temple 
structure, but in everything else. The 
temporal and the eternal in life : these He 
was ever busy pointing out. 

We are in danger of emphasizing one or 
the other of these elements as though the 
other did not exist. On the one hand, the 
admonition to look not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are not 
seen, has been interpreted to mean that 
we must be entirely oblivious to our sur- 
roundings, not to look at the things God 
has Everywhere placed before us. We have 
seen the hermit going off to his cave in 
order not to see the things which are seen 

59 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

and to see the things which are not seen. 
He has had his vision by the side of some 
clear running brook, he has seen his Lord 
transfigured before him, but he has not 
heard Him calling him out into a world of 
service. His seclusion has resulted in the 
form of selfishness which Jesus so often 
inveighed against. Or we have seen the 
ascetic looking not only upon the material 
world as a hindrance to the spiritual, but 
also upon his body as having inherent 
therein the germs of sin which are ever 
gnawing at his spiritual vitality. So he 
sought to lacerate his body in order to give 
his spirit free play. His view would lead 
logically to the annihilation of all matter, 
and hence to the destruction of one's self 
and one's neighbors. Or we have heard 
the stoic telling us that while matter is 
real and something we can not escape, yet 
we must be entirely indifferent to it, look 
upon heat and cold, joy and sorrow, as they 
come, make the best of them, only being 

60 



THE TEMPOEAL AND ETERNAL. 

sure that in the end they will control ns 
and not we them. Stoicism would lead ns 
into the toils of fatalism ; whatever is must 
be, we are in the grip of an ever blindly 
working mechanism which sooner or later 
will draw us into its coils. The fallacy of 
the hermit and the ascetic and the stoic is 
that they fail to see the real significance 
of the temporal, and hence do not let it 
enter into its rightful place in controlling 
their lives. 

The other extreme, to look only at the 
temporal — that which necessarily must 
pass away and be no more — is well illus- 
trated by the attitude of many of the Jews 
in regard to their temple. To them it was 
a beautiful building adorned with much 
gold and silver, a constant delight to the 
eyes, but no more. Its real purpose, a 
place of training for reverent and sincere 
devotion, had faded from their minds. 
This purpose alone was eternal and would 
escape all the ravage of time. 

61 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

Both the temporal and the eternal exist 
for ns. It is onr concern to relate our- 
selves to them. Only once can we cross a 
stream, said the Greek philosopher, be- 
cause when we would cross it the second 
time the water we crossed over is already 
far on its way to the sea. This is true. 
The water is the mere temporalness of the 
stream. If flows on and on and we never 
can catch up with it. So are we necessarily 
related to the material world. It exists for 
us only in time, and the time for each one 
of us is short. The pessimist, realizing 
this fact, said, ^^ Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity.'' To him to live was a weariness 
of the flesh, there was but little outlook for 
man. Time and chance happened to them 
all. The optimist, with the same realizing 
sense, however, said, ^^As for these things 
which ye see there shall not remain one 
stone upon the other which shall not be 
thrown down." To him to live, however, 
was a sublime privilege; it offered every 

62 



THE TEMPOEAL AND ETEENAL. 

inducement to hope and peace and joy, 
it permitted man to be in harmony with 
his Maker and to develop into His like- 
ness. 

This view of life was due to the signifi- 
cance which Jesus attached to the tem- 
poral. It is only a means to the external. 
"When He spoke of the temple falling down 
He did not see a ruin, a mere mass of stone 
and debris. He saw another temple whose 
foundation was as deep as the earth's 
center, whose pillars were as high as the 
giant trees and lofty mountain peak, whose 
arch was the vault of the heavens, and 
whose music and ceremonial were the 
voices of untold millions of men and women 
and children praising God and worshiping 
Him. This eternal temple He saw in the 
temporal pile of stone and ornaments be- 
fore Him. He did not ask Hi§ followers 
to look away from that which they could 
see. He asked them to look at it, and so 
searchingly, so scrutinizingly, that they 

63 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

would see the soul, the spirit therein, that 
which alone was eternal, so that when the 
temporal would pass they would possess 
the eternal. The temporal is, therefore, 
only a means to lead us out into the 
eternal. It never can be an end in it- 
self. As we travel to some distant place 
on some errand we go by a certain means 
of conveyance. For the time being we are 
closely related to the means. "We may need 
to continue this relation for several days, 
it may become so familiar to us as to seem 
an entirely natural element of our life ; for 
the time being it will seem to be identical 
with our life. But the moment comes and 
we must leave our car or ship. Now we 
cease to lay much stress upon it, for it was 
only an incident in our journey. It car- 
ried us across the continent or across the 
ocean, but it had only a temporary relation 
to our real purpose. That purpose repre- 
sented the eternal and remained after the 
other had passed. We read a book and for 

64 



THE TEMPOEAL AND ETEENAL. 

a period we are wholly absorbed in tbat 
book. The eye of the author looks deep 
into our soul, it sees our perplexities, our 
hopes, our aspirations, and it points these 
things out to us. Our being pulsates with 
a new life because we see it now as in a 
mirror. The book, however, is only the 
means to this end — it is temporal merely, 
and must pass. To-morrow, next week, we 
will remember only a few sentences or a 
striking thought. But it was a medium to 
the eternal, its life has entered our life, 
we can not identify it, point out the stones 
thereof and the goodly ornaments, for 
these are no more. But its quickening in- 
fluence remains, its spirit lives, these are 
now a part of our mental and spiritual 
endowment. 

So of all education. We are building a 
structure, stone upon stone. We are ac- 
quiring a knowledge of this subject, we are 
reading widely in that field, investigating 
accurately those phenomena. But all these 
^ 65 



THE ASSUEAXCE OF FAITH. 

things are temporal. The old mnst dis- 
appear, the new come to l:2:_t. The eternal 
in our edncation is the dt^Vflopment of onr 
mind and our will so that we shall be able 
to rear a new strnctnre of which we mnst 
be the architect and the builder, and in the 
last stage the sole tenant. If we have not 
grasped this eternal in onr life's prepara- 
tion we have missed our aim and are mis- 
spending our time. 

So in religion. There are certain ritual- 
istic for^'-- ^-^-nd ceremonial rites and theo- 
logical ' ^ /^;'tions that objectify religion 
for us and help us to an intelligent and 
reverent devotion. But these are the mere 
temporalness of religion. They are only 
means to help us realize the eternal in onr 
inner life and to purify our thoughts and 
actions. Yet there are many ~' " lay so 
much stress on accustomed form- .A wor- 
ship and the familiar phraseology in re- 
ligious speech that when these are changed 
or taken away their religion is gone. So 

66 



THE TEMPORAL AND ETERNAL. 

in the habits of dresS and adornment and 
the formalities of social convention and 
usage, and the necessity of supplying our 
physical wants and comforts. These are 
only the means to help us appear respect- 
able and conduct ourselves properly and 
meet the demands of daily life. When we 
live for dress and social form and money 
getting and act as though we had found 
the end and not only the means of life, we 
have hitched our chariots to a comet, and 
with the comet must disappear. 

We realize only too well how uncertain 
life is, how we are ever in the continual 
flow of the temporal, that all things must 
pass from our grasp. The cry of man- 
kind, therefore, is for the eternal, some- 
thing which he can place under his feet 
and stand on firmly. For this the whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain. 
The search for this has sent many a storm- 
tossed soul into the cloister. For in the 
intense moments of calm that come over 

67 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

us all ^ve can not help but hear the noise 
and plaintive cry in the deeps of our souls 
as of a bird beating against its cage and 
begging for release out into its native free- 
dom. The man who can lead us to a be- 
lief in the abiding touches the feeling of 
eternity in us. He ever commands our 
attention, and if he can but make us see 
the wider, permanent world in which we 
may have a part, he will save us from this 
world and transform our lives from being 
the merely incidental in a fleeting world 
to the living realities of an eternal world. 
This Jesus does for us. He insists upon 
the reality of the material world and shows 
us how we must be a part thereof, living 
in it and ever meeting all its diversity of 
condition and demand. But He tells us to 
seek in the outward forms and conditions 
of life the inner meaning and essence, to 
look behind the material and the temporal 
for the spiritual and eternal. He brings 
us a message of the eternal. Everywhere 

68 



THE TEMPOEAL AND ETEENAL. 

and always He revealed and represented 
the eternal. He leads us confidently to 
believe that in this passing show of life 
there is an abiding element, that as we can 
reach down and dip from the flowing 
stream a cup of cold water which shall 
qnench our thirst and strengthen our 
souls, so can we draw deep from the foun- 
tain springs of life which are ever send- 
ing their streams onward and take our 
portion thereof which shall be to us power 
and sustenance. He shows us the reality 
of that larger world for which we were 
born. In this world Jesus lived, and He 
declared it possible for us to enter into it 
with Him. He would immediately usher 
us therein. This world in which we are 
so prone to remain is a world for children 
with limited perspective, that one is the 
world for men with lofty aims, seeking an 
ever-widening horizon. There men come 
into their true manhood, for they put away 
their childish things and cease to speak 

69 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

and understand and think as children. 
There they come into their manly estate, 
they are their own administrators and 
guardians. They may plan larger and 
more worthy pursuits and embark upon 
those vast and splendid careers which that 
larger universe offers. Base indeed and 
circumscribed and comfortless is this pres- 
ent life when it becomes a mere pursuit 
of sensuous pleasure and vast wealth and 
worldly honors, mere incidentals of life, 

Like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm. 

It is worthy and to be desired, however, 
when we see that it is but the outer court 
through which we must pass into the real 
temple of life, where we can see the flood 
of light streaming through its windows, 
whose beautiful and suggestive designs had 
no meaning for us from without; where 
we can hear the music of its choir and un- 
derstand its notes, whose loud and intense 



THE TEMPOEAL AND ETEENAL. 

chords were only confusion to ns from 
without and whose subdued and comfort- 
ing tones were unheard ; where we can take 
our places with men and women of like 
mind with us and join in the inspiriting 
service of devotion to and worship of him 
whose we are and whom we must serve. 
Citizens of two worlds: these we are — 
a temporal and an eternal- — the higher ever 
drawing out our best and leading us to the 
better. As the Almighty has shown us in 
nature that our earth is explicable only 
in relation to a larger cosmos on which it 
must depend, so in Jesus Christ He has 
shown us that our world can only be un- 
derstood in relation to that larger world 
over which the Spirit of Christ rules and 
to which we must turn our sincerest 
thought and most ardent endeavor. Thus 
we have the eternal in the temporal. Not 
one stone will remain upon another, but 
we will have entered that larger estate 
wherein we can dispense with such smaller 

71 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

needs. Faith, hope, and love will remain, 
and the desire for righteousness, and the 
pursuit of knowledge, and the inspiration 
of the beautiful and the good. For these 
are the expressions of the eternal thought 
and will from which the world came forth 
and by which it forever goes onward. In 
relation to this Eternal Being only are per- 
manence and stability to be considered. 
Take Him out of the world and it will be- 
come a blind mass. Take Him out of our 
lives and they will be as fruitless as a 
tree from which the sap has ceased to flow, 
as dark as a wire cut off from its current, 
as lifeless as a coal from which the carbon 
has been burnt. If we keep God in our 
lives we lay hold on the eternal within 
us and enter that larger life where all 
the powers of mind and soul have free play 
and worthy stimulus. ^^For this is life 
eternal that they might know Thee the only 
true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou 
hast senf 

7? 



V. 
APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

Theke are two ways of finding God. These 
ways are so comprehensive in their scope 
as to exclude all others. The one way is 
through nature, or to use a term which the 
advocates of this way delight to use, 
through cosmic forces. This term is suf- 
ficiently vague for all except those who 
feel themselves especially initiated into its 
mysteries. And the vagueness of the 
words sticks also to the way. For it must 
be explained what cosmic forces are and 
how they can lead to God. A child would 
not know what the term meant, and an 
older person must walk in an intellectual 
valley of the shadow until he puts himself 
to the task of dispelling the gloom. Even 
then the end is more apt to be darkness 
than light. 

73 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

The other way of finding God is through 
man. When we speak of man we have 
a connotation which even the child appre- 
ciates. It does not have to be told what 
man is, for there is its father and there 
are its uncles, perhaps, and a host of other 
men whom it knows. The child under- 
stands at once when we speak about a man. 
The very term suggests certain ideas to 
its infantile intellect. It suggests power: 
a child's father can do anything. It sug- 
gests wisdom: a child's father knows 
everything. It suggests goodness: a 
child's father is the embodiment of virtue. 
We question the child mind on these points 
and find it has the very highest type of 
manhood in consideration. The drunkard 
is loathsome, the tramp is to be feared, 
the thief and robber to be shunned as 
darkness. Such perverts rightly have no 
place in the child 's definition of man ; they 
are not included in its human category. 

These child ideas have to be modified. 
74 



APPROACHES TO GOD. 

They do not lead at once to the solution of 
the question : who, where, and what is God ? 
There is something about the idea of man, 
however, which is clear and tangible even 
to a child. The metre we study man in 
his best estate and truest worth the more 
are we led up to a Supreme Being who 
is the Author of man's being, a Being in 
whom wisdom and power and goodness 
originate and find expression. 

Here are two ways of trying to find God : 
the one through physical nature, the other 
through human life. The question put 
nineteen centuries ago on a Sabbath day 
in a Galilean cornfield is still a pertinent 
one and goes to the root of the question, 
' ' How much better is a man than a sheep ? ' ' 
The question was up as to the relative 
value of saving the life or relieving the 
distress of a dumb beast or ministering in 
like manner to a human soul. The ques- 
tion was its own answer, ^^How much 
better is a man than a sheep T' Leaving 

75 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

the comparison of man with beast thus an- 
swered, let us go beyond or below the range 
of brute creation to that of physical na- 
ture, and put this question: How much 
better is a man than a tree or a flower or 
a mountain or the sea? Our souls are 
charmed with the beauties, the grandeur, 
the breath-taking wonders, and illimitable 
possibilities of inanimate creation. Yet 
what are these when man is put in the 
balance and truly studied? The mind, the 
will, the energy, the possibilities of man — 
these are the noble, thought-arresting, con- 
viction-compelling characteristics we dis- 
cover when we look at man for whom the 
world was made and who is the real and 
vital and energizing center of the physical 
universe. 

Tennyson looked at a flower in a cran- 
nied wall and after mature reflection reg- 
istered the imperative condition precedent 
to all knowledge. If he could only know 
all about that flower there in its crannies 

76 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

lie would know what God and man is. He 
could not know. Nature to that extent is 
a sealed book. Yet he could turn from the 
flower and look into the cradle of the last 
born babe and in one glance see more 
of God than all the rocks and rills and 
fields and flowers could tell him. 

When we look at these two ways of try- 
ing to find God we see that one is on a 
lower, the other on a higher level. The 
one deals with the strata of the hills and 
the rocks in the earth, with protoplasm 
and nerve-cells, and things that live in the 
water and creep upon the ground and hide 
themselves in jungles ; the other deals with 
mind and heart and will, with intellect, 
with love, with service, with self-sacrifice. 

Following this lower way, turning now 
and then into its by-paths, forming an ac- 
quaintance with the life that throngs this 
pathway — the swimming and the creeping 
and the swinging expressions of life — some 
very good men have found God. But it 

77 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

is not tlie liigliway to God, but a by-way. 
It is a devious way and also a dangerous 
when followed only. There are the thick 
undergrowth of the jungle which causes 
much stumbling, and the mosses and other 
parasites hanging from the trees which 
drop their poisonous germs; miasma and 
malaria are abroad. It takes a good con- 
stitution, a stout heart, a cool head, and 
a steady nerve to tread this path. Even 
then many good men who go in thereat 
come to confusion and are overwhelmed 
by doubt. It is the materialistic agnostic's 
way of finding God. He says: believe as 
little as possible, take nothing for granted, 
accept only what the eye can see or a rigor- 
ous logic can prove. Then he undertakes 
to give us his belief, which to believe makes 
a greater draft on the intellect than the 
belief of a childlike faith. As ^^ living mat- 
ter, plants, animals and man, came about'' 
through the ^^unconscious" working of 
laws inherent" in ^^world-evolving 
78 



a 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

stuff," — *^So science commonly supposes," 
so the soul — if there be a soul — and the in- 
tellect evolved from the ooze of a slime 
pit. ^^ Morality is refined selfishness. 
Men are good because it pays them 
to be. Morality's roots are in the 
blackest subsoil of human character. 
From selfishness that has no wish except 
to gratify brutish appetite and passion 
has been evolved all that we know and 
admire in justice, mercy, altruism, and the 
personal virtues." It is a breath of fresh 
air we breathe in the saying of Him whose 
hand was on the very pulse of humanity 
and whose diagnosis of humanity's disease 
still stands the test of expert investiga- 
tion. ^^Do men gather grapes of thorns 
or figs of thistles?" ^^A good tree can not 
bring forth evil fruit, neither can a cor- 
rupt tree bring forth good fruit. ' ' Neither 
are justice and mercy and altruism and 
the personal virtues evolved from the 
blackest subsoil of human character and 

79 



lThe assurance of faith. 

with no wish except to gratify brutish ap- 
petite and passion. Every approach to 
God must fail if it can not account for 
goodness and mercy and altruism. Hence 
cosmic forces fail as an approach to God. 
Turn from this approach to God on the 
lower levels and mount up to the higher 
altitude where the goal of creation, man, 
lives and moves and has his being. The 
line of the poet which says every pros- 
pect of nature pleases and only man is vile 
is true only of some men. Man by nature 
is not vile. He is the noblest creation of 
God, made a little lower than the angels. 
There is the animal in him, and if he gives 
this full play he can descend even to the 
level of the brute. But there is also the 
divine in him, and with this under devel- 
opment he can mount ever higher and with 
the ease of a bird spreading its wings to 
fly. The newspapers report that an over- 
land train on the Santa Fe railroad, while 
running fifty miles an hour across the dry 

80 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

and burning Mohave Desert, was stopped 
by a man who was tending a few head of 
cattle. The train men hurried to supply 
him with water, because there is a law in 
Nevada that requires every train to stop 
instantly when flagged anywhere in the 
desert by any one needing water. Train 
schedules fly into atoms before this human 
provision. Ask a man dying from thirst 
on the desert to look at the surrounding 
nature and find God, and his reply will be 
a bitter curse or a helpless wail. Tell him 
to hold up his hand, even though it be 
feeble, before an onrushing one-hundred- 
thousand-weight of steel and let him see 
men like him hasten with life-giving water 
and he will see God, although he may not 
recognize Him. 

During the awful conflagration that fol- 
lowed the earthquake in San I'rancisco 
men and women and children were seen 
going along the desolated streets to places 
of refuge holding each other by the hand. 
« 81 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

Even strong men were not ashamed to go 
through the streets holding each other's 
hands. Ah, the touch of a human hand! 
That was all that many of the sufferers 
had left. The very earth trembling be- 
neath their feet, home destroyed, business 
ruined, the fruit of a lifetime gone in a 
moment. What mockery it would have 
been to have said to those stricken people : 
Look at the manifestation of Nature, and 
in the earthquake and the fire see your 
God! Yet they felt Him in every warm 
handclasp, and knew that hope was not 
shaken and love was not burned. 

Sickness or death enters the home. The 
shadows are lengthening. There is that 
awful stillness when every sound seems 
hushed except the one voice that tells of 
approaching distress or loneliness. One 
might think of taking a walk abroad under 
such circumstances and finding comfort in 
the meadows and hills, or of turning to a 
favorite horse or dog and finding a real 

83 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

note of sympathy. But only when a friend 
or loved one comes and clasps onr hand 
and speaks with the silent look of the eyes 
come the sustenance and hope that enable 
us to hear that other voice saying, '^Be 
still and know that I am God/' With 
strong resignation we can then cry, 
* ^ Though He slay me yet will I trust Him. ' ' 
Through man is man led to God and saved. 
Companionship is man's salvation. Soli- 
tary confinement is far more dreaded than 
the rack or the gallows or death itself. 

When Browning brings David before 
Saul to dispel the king's melancholy, he 
lets the musician play first the gladsome 
songs of nature; the tunes which all the 
sheep and birds know. But Saul does not 
stir. He then plays the rollicking notes 
of the harvest songs when the reapers are 
full of joy. But Saul does not stir. He 
plays then the marriage song and the war 
strains, but Saul only groans. Then the 
sweet singer touches the notes of man- 

83 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

hood's prime vigor and leads Saul to see 
that his Sa^T-or must be man, a man who 
could do most and bear most for mankind. 

*^0 Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; 

a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; 

a Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life 

to thee ! See the Christ stand ! " 

To find God through man is man's sal- 
vation. And Jesus the God-man, the link 
between God and man, leads us to the very 
throne of the Almighty and we feel com- 
forted and satisfied when He interprets 
God for us. As the agnostic must make 
his comparisons, if they are to be valid, 
from the highest type evolved, so do we 
look at the best, the noblest, the truest 
we know in mankind, and make our judg- 
ment accordingly. We are not ashamed 
to turn with Peter to Jesus and say, '^Lord, 
to whom else can we go but to Thee?'^ 

84 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

In the criticism tliat has centered about 
Jesus, there are two points that disputants 
agree upon. These two points are seen 
from every vantage just as the twin peaks 
of the Jungfrau ever lift up their snowy 
heads. These two points are, first, that 
Jesus is the most perfect type of manhood 
history knows, and second, that none has 
revealed God to man more clearly than 
He. In spite of the caustic attacks made 
upon Jesus by French or German or Eng- 
lish critic, these two points rise clear above 
the smoke even as the mountain-top stands 
in the clear heaven above the fog. What 
Peter said on that day long ago history 
has been repeating ever since and with in- 
creasing emphasis: ^^Lord, to whom shall 
we go? Thou hast the words of eternal 
life.'' His words were the expression of 
His own true life. As we look upon Jesus 
as the man, the lover, the sympathizer, 
the sacrificer, we feel wonderfully akin to 
Him because He shows us in the clearest 

85 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

light the very characteristics in man which 
most appeal to us and upon which we are 
most dependent. Man needs the love, the 
sympathy, the confidence of man. If he 
had not these to turn to, this world would 
be unkind and cruel and God a very dis- 
tant and indifferent stepfather. 

^^Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast 
the words of eternal life," — the sentence 
does not end here; it goes on — ^^and we 
believe and know that Thou art the Christ 
the Son of the living God.'' These last 
words are a stumbiing-block for many. 
^^Thou art the Christ, the Son of the liv- 
ing God. ' ' As we seek to understand these 
words we forget all about Jesus down in 
the very midst of humanity ever lifting 
men and women up to God, and lose our- 
selves in metaphysical questionings as to 
how Jesus came into the world. We mag- 
nify the incidental to the importance of the 
vital. We do not ordinarily ask first where 
a man came from, but what he has done. 

86 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

There is a natural tendency to immortal- 
ize the youth, of every great man. Had he 
not been great, however, we should never 
have heard anything about his youth. His 
acts are the important thing. We are not 
called upon to believe Jesus was divine pri- 
marily because of certain miracles which 
He is said to have performed. We can 
believe that He was divine, yes, and have 
firm faith in the miracles also — although 
Jesus never laid any emphasis on miracles 
— because of what Jesus could accomplish 
in His day, and has accomplished ever 
since, and accomplishes to-day. We be- 
lieve in the Christ of the Gospels because 
of the Christ of history. We believe He 
could have performed miracles in His day 
because He has been performing miracles 
ever since, making the waste places glad, 
dispelling darkness, enthroning love. 

Peter called Jesus the Christ, the Son 
of the living God. In the Eevised Version 
we will find him quoted as having said 

87 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

merely, ^ ' Thou art the Holy One of God. ' ' 
While there may thus seem a discrepancy 
as to the words Peter used, there is abso- 
lutely none as to the thought Peter ex- 
pressed. He looked upon Jesus as his 
Savior, and it is immaterial whether he 
called Him the Holy One of God or the Son 
of the living God or any other term that 
would justify his meaning. Jesus was 
Peter's Savior because he had submitted 
himself to Him. This is the point. He is 
the Savior of all who submit themselves 
to Him. The dynamic of every religion 
is submission to a person and hot to a 
creed. TVe submit ourselves to the care of 
a physician in whom we have confidence 
and learn many of the secrets of the med- 
ical profession. Abstract terms become 
concrete things. We are able to help the 
physician much in his ministrations. As 
we submit ourselves to Jesus, we learn His 
secrets, can foresee His purposes, discover 
His methods, help Him in the salvation of 



APPEOACHES TO GOD. 

our souls. He becomes our Savior. We 
then believe because we know. 

Our approach to God is through man 
and not through nature. We do not dis- 
parage nature. God is there. We find 
Him there, however, because we first found 
Him in ourselves and in our neighbors. 
The best man who can help us find God 
is Jesus of Nazareth. When we submit 
ourselves to Him entirely as Peter did, 
we exclaim with Peter: ^^Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. ' ' 



89 



yi. 

GOD'S WAT NATUKAL. 

It was but a few hours' journey from 
Mount Carmel where Elijah, the prophet, 
so gloriously triumphed over the prophets 
of Baal, to the juniper tree where Elijah, 
the fugitive, sat disconsolate, mourning his 
lonely fate. ^^I, only I am left, and my 
life would they take/' 

God was with him on the hill; in the 
valley he is alone. On the mountain God 
revealed Himself in fire and wind and 
rain; in the desert the prophet is unable 
to discover any evidence that God is about. 
On the mountain God was ready to defend 
His own majesty and avenge the insult to 
His honor. In the valley He was not con- 
cerned about His prophet, He stretched 
not forth His hand to stay his pursuers or 

90 



GOD'S WAY NATUEAL. 

His strong arm to protect his life. So in 
the dolor of his soul and the delusion of 
his mind he pictured Jehovah as a God of 
the hills, but not of the valleys ; a God who 
cared for His own interests and the on- 
going of His world, but who had no con- 
cern in the affairs of men and women; a 
God of fire and wind and thunder, but not 
a God whose manifestation was as quiet 
and gentle as a sprouting blade of grass. 
So Elijah mused and became more dis- 
couraged and lonely. 

There were some lessons about God 
which he needed to learn under that 
juniper tree. The word of the Lord came 
to him, we are told, and he was commanded 
to go forth and stand upon the mount 
before the Lord. And behold the Lord 
passed by, and a great and strong wind 
rent the mountains and brake in pieces the 
rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was 
not in the wind. And after the wind an 
earthquake, but the Lord was not in the 

91 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

earthquake; and after the earthquake a 
fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and 
after the fire a still small voice. And 
Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle, for 
the Lord had revealed Himself. In a still 
small voice, gentle, but pronounced, the 
natural way in which a father would speak 
to his child and teach him his lesson, God 
spoke to Elijah, and his eyes were made 
to see and his soul to rejoice. He had been 
thinking otherwise about God, that God 
must reveal Himself in what we choose to 
call a supernatural way. Anything won- 
derful or spectacular would be of God; 
that which was perfectly natural and which 
could be understood as natural was not 
of God. 

So a great many other people have 
thought. They have looked for Him only 
in signs and wonders. A drought or a 
hurricane, an eruption or an earthquake, 
a comet or a waterspout, was significantly 
portentous and indicated God's presence. 

93 



GOD'S WAY NATURAL. 

Calamity at hand or calamity to come was 
a visitation of the Almighty and man must 
cower before Him. It was not realized that 
this view, so long held by the devout, out- 
raged all rational thought of God. That 
it placed Him outside of His world like a 
king in his palace away from his subjects, 
to which he might return on occasion, as 
a king might enter one of his cities, with 
the blow of trumpet and the splendor of 
pageantry, and with all the indifference of 
one who was in supreme control. They 
did not realize that this view also did vio- 
lence to God's intelligence, as though He 
could not make a world orderly in its on- 
going; and further that it was a travesty 
of His love, for it indicated that He came 
into the world to punish His people. 

This view was satisfactory only to 
people who did not think. To others, espe- 
cially as the discoveries of science pro- 
gressed, it became more and more unten- 
able. So another view arose that went 

93 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

qnite to the other extreme. Science began 
to say: Nothing is supernatural, all is 
natural. No God is necessary to explain 
the beginning or ongoing of this world. 
Somehow or other that which we call 
matter, the material substance which we 
can see and feel, got to going by a kind 
of attraction or interaction, that this move- 
ment became more and more regular and 
fixed as law, and the orderly process we 
can trace in nature emerged. Then men 
began to suggest that this interaction of 
material substances was not only the 
method by which the world moved, but that 
it was also the cause of the world's begin- 
ning, and that if we could only go back far 
enough we would be able to see how the 
world began independent of God. We do 
not understand these things they tell us 
because we are as yet not wise enough. 
As we grow wiser all will be clear. In 
the meantime it is well enough to attribute 
to God those things which can not be ex- 

94 



GOD'S WAY NATUEAL. 

plained by matter and motion. But as 
men become more and more enlightened 
God will be less and less necessary and 
some day science will conduct Him to the 
frontier of the nniverse and ^^bow Him out 
with thanks for His provisional services. ' ' 
Here we have two views. The one look- 
ing at God only from the side of the super- 
natural gave us a God outside of His world 
with neither intelligence nor love, and the 
other looking at God from the purely 
naturalistic point of view gave us either 
exactly the same kind of God or no God 
at all. Exaggerated truth, in the long run, 
is just as depressing as half truth. Man's 
mind sooner or later revolts against both. 
So the error and the half-truth of these 
two views were harmonized. The clearest 
thinking of to-day gives us a God who is, 
was, and will be everywhere in the world 
and whose way of manifesting Himself is 
as natural as the air we breathe. The sci- 



95 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

entist lias come to see that science can not 
account for the beginning of things, that 
its province is to study the material uni- 
verse and the orderliness of its ongoing 
and tabulate results. That back of all 
matter and all law must be a Supreme In- 
telligence and a Supreme Will, and science 
leads us to the God in whom we live and 
move and have our being. On the other 
hand, the defenders of a God whose mani- 
festation is purely supernatural have come 
to see that they have expressed but a half- 
truth, that God is to be found, not so much 
in the wind or the earthquake or the fire 
as in the orderly ongoing of the world ; and 
that in this orderly ongoing the supreme 
love of the Almighty is manifest. His 
way, therefore, is the still small voice, the 
gentleness that makes man great. For He 
letteth the rain come down and the snow 
from heaven, which returneth not thither, 
but watereth the earth and maketh it to 
bring forth and bud, that it may give seed 

96 



GOD'S WAY NATUEAL. 

to the sower and bread to the eater. The 
great miracle is not the rending of a moun- 
tain, but the quiet opening of the earth at 
a decillion of places where the grass, the 
flower, the grain may come through. The 
great miracle is not the storm that would 
shatter the trees, or the fire belching out 
of a mountain and covering a city, but the 
rain which falls from heaven and the sun 
which warms the earth and makes it fruit- 
ful. Not to denude the earth, but to re- 
plenish it and make it a fit habitation for 
man, this is God's way, the gracious pur- 
pose of His eternal love. When we reflect 
upon this purpose and upon this love we 
see how perfectly natural it is for God to 
be in His world, for it is the complete 
thought of His mind and the fullest ex- 
pression of His activity. So when science 
brings us face to face with law and order, 
cause leading to effect, antecedent going 
before consequent, we do not become fear- 
ful and think we are going to be robbed 
' 97 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

of our God, but we rejoice. For the man 
of science has merely shown us God in a 
more wonderful way, has permitted us to 
see just a little more of His marvelous 
mind and of His will, which exhibit to us 
His love that is wider than the sea. And 
we exclaim with the psalmist, ^^0 Lord, 
how manifold are Thy works, in wisdom 
hast Thou made them all, the earth is full 
of Thy riches. '' 

As God's way in nature is to develop 
this earth for the good of man, so is it His 
way in history to develop man for His 
glory. In history as in nature we find 
God's way natural. Political upheavals 
and social cataclysms line the pages of 
civilization's march. But these are not 
according to His purpose nor due to His 
absence. They result from man's inter- 
vention, when he has undertaken to run 
God's world, and has thereby prevented 
His Spirit from being manifest. God was 
most clearly revealed to the ancient Is- 

98 



GOD'S WAY NATURAL. 

raelites and most tangibly felt by them 
when they were serving Him and not the 
idols of heathen nations. God was in their 
history, we say. But He was not only in 
their history ; He was in the history of the 
world before, and has been in the history 
of the world ever since. "We read of their 
wars and think they were fighting all the 
time, and so forget that there were long 
periods of years when they were at peace 
and rest, when every man sat nnder his 
own vine and fig tree and could cultivate 
the arts of peace and learn God's way of 
progress. 

Events of Bible times are not any more 
divine than the events of to-day. For God 
could be no more active and present in the 
time of the Israelites than He is present 
and active now. If we are ready to af- 
firm that God was more intimately related 
to His people then than He is now, we 
afi&rm that He was in the world, but has 
left it or is only indifferent about it. So 

99 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

we put Him out of the world again and 
impugn His love. Even when it came to 
conflict the Divine Hand moved no nearer 
the human than it does to-day. God was 
in the wars of Saul and David, but no more 
so than in the wars which established our 
independence and maintained our Union. 
We believe that God led George "Washing- 
ton and Abraham Lincoln, but we can not 
believe they had any surer light from 
heaven than the head of our Nation can 
have now. Events of four thousand or four 
hundred or fifty years ago were extraor- 
dinary in a marked degree, and they seem 
more so to us. But they were as familiar 
every-day events to the men of those times 
as the Eussian-Japanese war, for example, 
was to us just a few years ago. So 
familiar were they that doubtless many 
thought at the time God had nothing to 
do with them. So the events of to-day 
are so familiar to us that we are unable 
to see God in them. In five decades or 
100 



GOD'S WAY NATURAL. 

five centuries the world will see, as we 
can not see now, how God's educating hand 
is stretched before ns. Perhaps if we were 
not so matter-of-fact we could see God in 
His world even more now. If the Hebrew 
writers had written eighteenth or nine- 
teenth century history as they wrote the 
history of their own time, they would have 
pictured God in this world far more than 
we do. And we should have such state- 
ments in our histories as the following: 
^^And the Lord came unto Washington as 
he was sitting in his tent and said. Be- 
hold, the Hessians are rioting this night 
beyond the river. Get thee up, therefore, 
and cross over, for the Lord hath surely 
given them into thy hand. And Washing- 
ton arose and did as he was bid, for he 
knew that it was the Lord which spoke." 
And as we follow the American army 
crossing the Delaware on that icy night 
with its meager equipment, are we follow- 
ing anything less miraculous than Joshua 
101 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

around the walls of Jericho or Gideon into 
battle with the Midianites? Was God 
fighting with Jonathan when he scaled the 
heights of Michmash, and not with Dewey 
when he sailed up Manila Bay? What 
wonld not a Hebrew writer, with all his 
imagery, have made of that Sunday's 
flight and pursuit at the entrance to San- 
tiago Harbor twelve years ago ? He would 
have seen God visible in the heavens and 
have heard His voice audible as in the days 
of Joab and Jehu and Hezekiah. It may 
seem strange to take these familiar events 
and compare them with those so-called 
sacred or divine events. But if we can 
believe in a God at all we must believe 
that He is present with us now as He was 
present then, even though we can not see 
His hand nor hear His voice. Would we 
have God suddenly appear in a flash of 
lightning and with a voice of thunder, take 
the reins of government in His hands and 
depose men as mere puppets? Of what 

102 



GOD'S WAY NATUEAL. 

possible use could this world be to Him 
then, and what significance could man have 
in His sight? Or would we have His Spirit 
working in the hearts of men and breath- 
ing abroad the divine wisdom, guiding man 
with intelligence and sympathy through a 
world prepared for him, so that evermore 
he could work out his own salvation and 
be in harmony with God's will? 

Man makes mistakes, assemblies blun- 
der, nations clash, but nevertheless the 
Spirit of God is manifest. It is more mani- 
fest now than it ever has been, and when 
it becomes completely, perfectly manifest, 
then will man and nation have done God's 
will on earth as it is done in heaven. ^^Not 
by might nor by power, but by My Spirit 
saith the Lord." 

A quiet, orderly, natural education of 
man, this is God's way in history. Ee- 
sults come slowly, and perhaps we may 
not see them, but that is not our concern. 
We see Him leading the rank and file 
103 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

across the centuries and we can trust Him 
to lead us still. 

Just as God is present in nature and 
in history, so is He present in the human 
soul. And His way is still natural. Now 
and then He enters some soul and there 
is a mighty convulsion, as though the very 
deeps of that soul were disturbed and 
loosened from their foundation, and there 
is a cry as if the demons which possessed 
that soul were issuing forth, leaving it as 
one dead. A soul wholly abandoned to 
sin and shame needs to be thus torn be- 
fore the Spirit of God can manifest itself. 
And that God can and does come thus into 
the human soul is evidenced by Harold 
Begbie's remarkable book on '^Twice-Born 
Men.'' But that is not the way the Holy 
Spirit would work. His is the natural 
way. '^ Suffer the little children to come 
unto Me and forbid them not, for of such 
is the Kingdom of heaven.'' God is in 
every human soul born into the world. He 

104 



GOD'S WAY NATURAL. 

does not come in afterward. If we insist 
upon this we insist upon an absentee God 
who now and then not only must come 
into the world which He created to adjust 
it, but who must come into the human soul 
in an external way to give it enlighten- 
ment. God is in the human soul and by 
nurture and training He evermore pos- 
sesses that soul. Eeligion, therefore, is 
not supernatural, imposed from without, 
but it is natural, developed from within. 
Men have tried to discover God in the 
human soul by cold calculation, but have 
failed. Many have associated Him with 
visible manifestations, with an outward 
witnessing of His Spirit, with a peculiar 
experience or sensation, but in all these 
outward signs the Lord is not to be found. 
They may accompany the new birth of a 
soul, but only because the Spirit of God 
is within. We discover Him in the soul 
when we seek to do right. Every right 
act accomplished puts us in accord with 
105 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

the system of righteousness by which this 
world and humanity are moved. In this 
system the dictates of a quickened con- 
science perfectly fit, and evermore are we 
closely associated with a ^^ spiritual order, 
larger, higher, worthier" than ourselves. 
This spiritual world becomes real to us and 
our faith therein unshakable. There are 
voices without and within prompting to a 
better life. "We begin to understand these 
voices, we hear the divine presence 
breathing in our souls. For, as President 
Hyde has said, ^^He who does right comes 
to see the good ; and he who sees the good 
finds God and blessedness.'' 

Ever}^ step in this religious experience 
is natural. It is simply the unfolding of 
the divine in man through his own instru- 
mentality. It is God working in man to 
do and to will of His good pleasure to 
enable man to work out his own salvation. 
And God ^^ works in" through the Spirit 
of Christ and the Holy Spirit. These are 

106 



GOD'S WAY NATURAL. 

the witnesses of God's presence. So, too, 
is there the natural unfolding of the di- 
vine in the child, who has not yet come 
to years of understanding, by the proper 
care and training of its parent. It is the 
religion of Jesus Christ. First the blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. 
But before the blade can begin to grow 
the divine seed must be sown, and this is 
God implanted in the human soul. 

To see God in nature, in history, in the 
human soul, ever striving to work in a 
quiet and natural way, seeking to enlist 
the sympathy and co-operation of man — 
this is a vision that makes life worthy 
and honorable and sublime. It prompts 
us to see life in its true relation, and shows 
us the sacred trust committed to our care 
when as human souls we were placed in 
this world to become co-workers with the 
Divine Spirit. 



107 



yiL 

THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

Hekod of old gives ns a splendid starting 
point to meet the materialistic argument 
which would shut us off from an infinitely 
wise and loving Creator. The reports 
concerning Jesus had spread abroad so 
persistently that finally He was the object 
of conversation in Herod's throne-room. 
Some of the courtiers were saying that 
Jesus was Elias the prophet, others that 
He was a modern prophet like Amos or 
Isaiah or Jeremiah. When Herod heard 
thereof, he said, ^^It is the man John whom 
I beheaded ; he is risen from the dead. ' ' 

This statement, incidentally thrown into 
the narrative, arrests our attention, for it 
gives us an intimation as to how far an 

108 



« 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

unbeliever will go in Ms belief. John the 
Baptist had passed out of life, he could 
not be interrogated nor examined; Jesus 
was standing in the multitude teaching and 
healing — every word and act could be 
ground fine in the crucible of proof. Yet 
Herod was readier to believe that a head- 
less man had returned to life than exam- 
ine on his own account the claims of a liv- 
ing one. Strange as this may seem, such 
vagaries and extravagances of unbelief are 
not confined to Herod's day. "We find them 
among all ages and among all peoples. 
We are continually meeting with the be- 
liefs of unbelief which put a far greater 
strain upon the human intellect than the 
beliefs of belief. 

In the first place, we meet that ever-re- 
curring statement that no personal intel- 
lect and hence no personal love is in and 
behind the phenomena of nature and the 
ongoing of the universe ; that there is only 
a blind, unintelligent, unconscious working 

109 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

of material forces, wMcli in some way got 
to going and through which the world, as 
we know it, is to be explained. In a word, 
there is no God, — only matter. The beliefs 
of the unbelievers in God and His cre- 
ative power begin where all can stand; 
namely, we know nothing of that which 
was before the present state of things and 
that speculation about this former state 
is futile. The believer is content to say, 
*^In the beginning God created.'' The un- 
believer, forgetting his assertion that 
speculation of the beginning of things is 
futile, claims — and I am quoting from the 
most noted of the present-day members of 
the materialistic school — that ^^we must 
make a start somewhere" and ^^are there- 
fore compelled to posit a primordial, nebu- 
lous, non-luminous state," in which the 
atoms and molecules of different sizes and 
unevenly distributed awakening by col- 
lision with each other began to rearrange 
themselves in such form that what seemed 

110 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

to be absolute likeness became unlike in 
character — an ape and a man, e. g. — ^wbat 
was shapeless became shapely, what sim- 
ple more complex, till the highest com- 
plexity in the development of living matter 
was reached. "What I have just quoted 
was not written as a jest, but was seri- 
ously set down in a professedly scientific 
work, and is accepted by many believers 
in the materialistic school. "When we ex- 
amine this statement, what have we? In 
the beginning, not God but atoms. Where 
these atoms originally came from no sci- 
entist has ever assumed to tell us. These 
atoms were in a ^^ nebulous, non-luminous 
state.'' They began moving toward and 
colliding with each other — ^who started the 
movement we are not told — and in this col- 
lision they were awakened; i. e., a lifeless 
object by simply bumping up against an- 
other lifeless object became endowed with 
life. In this movement the atoms pro- 
ceeded to rearrange and shape themselves, 

111 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

changing like into nnlike, shapeless into 
shapely, simple into complex, until ont of 
nothing plant and animal life, and finally 
man, was evolved. 

This is the belief of unbelief; the be- 
lief of those who do not believe in a God 
of intelligence and creative force. If I 
should strew a platform with printer's 
type and say that the lifeless pieces of 
lead would come together and form them- 
selves into an orderly and intelligent com- 
position, we should have a statement sim- 
ilar to that of the materialistic scientist 
or philosopher who tells us that a lot of 
lifeless lumps got together and formed this 
earth with all its complexity of life. Or 
if I should set a child to playing with these 
types and say that it will so distribute 
them as to make intelligible reading, we 
should have a statement similar to that of 
the materialistic agnostic, who tells us that 
lifeless forms can take on order and mean- 
ing without the intervention of a conscious 

113 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

and knowing intelligence. It took a mind 
acute and alert to invent and perfect mov- 
able type, and it takes a mind keen and 
qnick so to distribute them as to make in- 
telligible reading matter. And it took a 
mind to create lifeless as well as living 
matter and a mind so to distribute and re- 
distribute these that the highest and most 
complex form of human existence could 
result. 

There are three insuperable difficulties 
that the materialistic evolutionist encoun- 
ters. First, to declare that there is no 
God assumes a far greater degree of in- 
telligence and knowledge than to assume 
that there is a God. For example, to adapt 
an illustration from another, suppose 
Eobinson Crusoe on his island had wanted 
to assure himself that there was no other 
human being on that island. It would 
have been necessary for him to explore 
every nook and cranny of the island and 
familiarize himself thoroughly with it, and 
8 113 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

even after lie had acquired this knowledge 
he could not have rested content, because 
he could not have known whether after he 
had explored the east side of the island, 
e. g., and then gone to the west side, or 
vice versa, somebody had not landed. In 
other words, in order for him to be cer- 
tain that there was no one else on the 
island he would have had to have a super- 
human knowledge which would have ac- 
quainted him with every part of the island 
at every moment of time. And yet, how 
did he learn that the island was or had 
been inhabited? By a single footprint in 
the sand. So when we undertake to say 
there is no God in this universe we are 
undertaking to say only what an in- 
finite and omniscient mind could know. 
Whereas, on the other hand, the simplest 
blade of grass makes God's presence 
known. 

Lord Kelvin, recognized as one of the 
greatest leaders of physical science, says : 

114 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

^^ Scientific thought is compelled to accept 
the idea of Creative Power. Forty years 
ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere 
in the comitry, if he believed that the 
grass and the flowers which he saw around 
us grew by mere chemical forces. He an- 
swered, ^No, no more than I could believe 
that the books of botany describing them 
could grow by mere chemical forces.' 
Every action of human free will is a 
miracle to physical and chemical and 
mathematical science. ' ' 

Secondly, if we assume that there is no 
intelligent mind back of creation we are 
making this non-intelligent substance more 
intelligent than the highest intelligence of 
man. For example, in our modern labora- 
tories our chemists are able to make imi- 
tation garnets and even small diamonds 
which deceive all but the expert lapidarist. 
No one would deny that great skill and 
knowledge on the part of these chemists 
are required to produce these results, that 

115 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

a governing mind of the highest capacity 
is present and active in every stage of 
the process. Place one of these ^ ^ paste '^ 
diamonds beside a large stone of clearest 
water, mined out of Mother Earth. Mnst 
there be an intelligence behind a paste 
diamond and none behind a Koh-i-noor? 
Is the inferior product the result of many 
years of patient study and wearisome 
work, the superior stone the result of mere 
chance? Herod, in his belief that a head- 
less man was speaking the words and do- 
ing the deeds of Jesus, is out-Heroded in 
the belief of intelligent men who ask us 
to believe with them, that there is no mind 
back of our minds, that we are here 
through mere chance, and that this world 
is the result of a collision among lifeless 
particles that came from nobody knows 
where. 

The third difficulty is that he who says 
there is no infinite and supreme mind back 
of all natural phenomena can not get along 

116 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

in Ms argument without making room for 
such a mind. If there were no God, man 
would have to create Him in order to ex- 
plain his own power of mind and will. 
So the agnostic, who denies the existence 
of a personal God on one hand, must sub- 
stitute the equivalent of such a God on the 
other. He speaks of an ^4dea" or a ^^ blind 
will," or a ^'sublimated unconsciousness,'' 
or a ^^ moral order," or the ^^ eternal not 
ourselves." But when we analyze the 
terms we find each one of them implies the 
very thing the agnostic and materialist 
would deny, i. e., personality. And as soon 
as we admit that there is a personality 
back of the phenomena of this world we 
put ourselves logically in the same place 
with the Hebrew who wrote, ^^In the be- 
ginning God. ' ' And we can quote the most 
eminent advocates of this very theory 
against themselves. Darwin wrote that the 
more he studied nature the more was he 
^ impressed with the conclusion that the 
117 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

contrivances and beautiful adaptations'' 
of nature ^^ transcend in an incomparable 
degree the contrivances and adaptations 
wbicli the most fertile imagination of the 
most imaginative man could suggest with 
unlimited time at his disposal/' Huxley, 
in his famous illustration of a tadpole de- 
veloping in his slimy cradle, said: ^^ After 
watching the process hour by hour, one is 
almost involuntarily possessed by the no- 
tion that some more subtle aid to vision 
than an achromatic object glass would show 
the hidden artist^ with his plan before him, 
striving with skillful manipulation to per- 
fect his work." And at another time, 
speaking of the wonders of crystallog- 
raphy, he said there were ^^ whole squad- 
rons of molecules under a governing eye 
[whose governing eye?] arranging them- 
selves in battalions, gathering around dis- 
tinct centers" until the perfect crystal 
was formed. ^^Here there is an architect 



1 The italics are not in the original. 

118 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

at work who makes no chips, no din; one 
who is building the particles into perfect 
and beautiful crystals.'' And Herbert 
Spencer, in his last message to the reading 
public, indirectly affirmed that the simple 
faith in a God supreme and over all 
transcended rationalistic arguments as to 
His non-existence. 

Here, then, is where the belief of un- 
belief brings us. The scientist who denies 
the existence of God — and there is at least 
one prominent scholar left who does — and 
declares there can be neither mind nor will 
back of nature's phenomena, still must 
admit that ' ' the plant and the animal seem 
to be controlled by a definite design in the 
combination of their several parts, just 
as clearly as we see in the machines which 
man invents and constructs. ' ' A machine, 
the least marvelous of all the wonders 
about us, needs an intelligent mind to in- 
vent and a skillful hand to construct, and 
the flower or the animal, which is more 

119 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

marvelous, seems to be the product of a 
definite design. But man, the most won- 
derful phenomenon in existence, is the re- 
sult of mere chance, a chemical ferment, 
an albuminous compound, a little path of 
protoplasm, as destitute of either will or 
responsibility as an effervescent powder. 
Far more easy is it to accept the most child- 
like belief in God's wisdom and love and in 
man's freedom and responsibility. 

Another cardinal belief of unbelief is 
that Christianity did not have a super- 
natural beginning. Jesus was a great 
Prophet and Leader, but nevertheless only 
a man. 

When we begin to ask ourselves what 
Christian civilization stands for we sum 
up all that is righteous and holy and be- 
neficent. Below the foundations of the 
hospital and asylum, the school and the 
Church, is the spirit of Christianity. And 
this is true in an increasing degree. In 
the last century a book appeared in Ger- 

130 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

many that startled all Europe, and the 
claim was made that the death-knell of 
Christianity had been sonnded. This book 
was Stranss' ^^Life of Jesus/' Hard on 
its heels came the work of Eenan, and 
soon everywhere on the Continent, and 
finally in England, the spirit of secularism 
and atheism was running strong and high 
to the disparagement and overthrow of 
Christianity. What was the result? As 
the spray on the crest of an ocean wave 
is dissipated in the sunlight, so was this 
froth and fume of an irreverent and un- 
knowing criticism on Christianity turned 
to nothing by the life and light of the pul- 
sating and illuminating spirit of Jesus 
Christ. And to-day, while we are far be- 
low the level, we are more active than ever 
in making His ideal the controlling one in 
human affairs. While we make all al- 
lowances for difference among Christian 
Churches and sects, there is to-day more 
devotion and influence in the world that 

121 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

must be accounted Christian than ever be- 
fore, while all kinds of Christian workers 
are more numerous and energetic than 
ever. Missionary operations alone evi- 
dence a degree of disinterested zeal never 
before equaled in the whole course of 
human history. The spirit of Christianity 
is more dominant in the world to-day than 
it ever was. If Jesus Christ was a mere 
man, then it is harder to believe that out 
of such a limited life so stupendous a 
product as modern civilization could have 
grown, than to believe that He was more 
than man — Jesus Christ, the Son of the 
liYing God. 

Turn from the conquests of Christianity 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth and the 
first few years of the present century to 
the first century and see there the conflict 
and victory presented. If we should 
imagine, to adapt another illustration, a 
lion and a tiger and a wolf uniting in a 
desperate effort to destroy a lamb and 

122 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

failing in the attempt, we should have a 
fair parallel of what actually happened in 
the first century. Christianity, as a weak 
and trembling lamb, was thrown into the 
very midst of the wolf of Jewish hate and 
the lion of Greek subtlety and the tiger of 
Eoman might. All the vitality and tenacity 
and fanaticism of three old and established 
nations, two in their turn having been 
world powers and the other then enjoying 
that supremacy, were thrown against this 
weak but intrepid spirit of true religion. 
Jew and Greek and Eoman were thrown 
aside as the hay and stubble which they 
were. Here is a fact that can not be denied 
and needs to be explained. What is the 
explanation of Gibbon, e. g., the bold an- 
tagonist of the supernatural origin of 
Christianity? First, because the early 
Christians were devoted to their cause, and 
second, because of the power of Constan- 
tine. What was the cause of the early 
Christians and what made them devoted 

123 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

to it, and what gave Constantine Ms 
power? Simply and purely the faith of 
the early disciples in Jesus Christ — a faith 
that they did not generate themselves, but 
which was generated and inspired by the 
living God through His Messenger on 
earth, Jesus. As the materialistic unbe- 
liever can not account for this world with- 
out God, so neither can the unbeliever in 
the supernatural origin of Christianity ac- 
count for the rise and spread of Chris- 
tianity except on the assumption that Jesus 
was more than a mere man. 

If Christ was an impostor. His mark re- 
mains upon history and must be accounted 
for. Whatever be the theory of the origin 
of Jesus Christ and the creed that bears 
His name. He remains the greatest fact 
in history. '^The simple record of three 
short years of Christ's active life,'' says 
Lecky, ^'has done more to regenerate and 
soften mankind than all the disquisitions 
of philosophers or the exhortations of 

124 



THE BELIEFS OF UNBELIEF. 

moralists/' It is far more difficult to be- 
lieve that an ^ impostor'' could more pro- 
foundly affect the human race than all the 
great figures of history put together, than 
to believe with Peter and James and John 
that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the 
living God. And it is far more difficult to 
believe that any one, especially those un- 
lettered Galilean fishermen, could have in- 
vented the sayings of Jesus or imagined 
such a pure and lofty life as the Gospels 
present, than to believe that Jesus lived 
and loved and that His disciples recorded 
His words and their memory of Him in 
the simple but essentially correct narra- 
tives of the Gospel writers. ^^It takes a 
Christ to invent a Christ. To ask us to 
believe that some nameless and forgotten 
impostor invented the character and story 
of Jesus Christ, preached the Sermon on 
the Mount, imagined all His parables, 
forged His ethics, conceived in His name 
the parable of the Prodigal Son, and of 
125 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

the Good Samaritan, and yet was Him- 
self tlirougliout the whole process a con- 
scious and conscienceless impostor — this is 
the wildest flight of mere unreason." It 
out-Herods Herod's belief of unbelief. 



126 



yni. 

GOD EESTING. 

God was active in His creation nntil He 
brought forth man. Then He rested. This 
is the simple account of Genesis. We may 
take this account as an utterance of child- 
hood, beautiful in its suggestiveness to be 
sure, but of no deeper significance. Many 
have discarded the opening verses of the 
Bible because they find them in conflict 
with latter-day science. But they would 
have no value for them even as poetic 
imagery. Now this is the superficial view 
of the Bible which many men who ought 
to know better take. The really thought- 
ful man to-day does not look to the Bible 
for scientific presentation or historical 
narrative. As an authority in these fields 
the Book has lost the prominence it had 
127 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

years ago. But the loss is only in the 
seeming, for the Bible never presumed to 
be an authority in these matters. And we 
welcome this seeming loss, because it 
means a great gain. The Bible has been 
restored to its rightful place, the place of 
the deepest, the truest, the most perfect in- 
terpretation of the fundamental problems 
of life. We may know a thing better than 
we are able to explain. "We may have con- 
ceptions which outrun actual knowledge. 
And our attempt to put our ideas in forms 
for others to understand will never be as 
successful as we would desire because we 
are dependent upon the imperfect medium 
of language to convey our thought. This 
is more true in reference to the writers 
of Genesis than it is to us. Our knowl- 
edge enables us to state our facts with 
more preciseness. But it is a grave ques- 
tion as to whether we can express our 
thoughts, those deep, underlying facts of 
our existence, with the suggestiveness they 

128 



GOD EESTING. 

did, the suggestiveness which carries even 
the last vestige of their meaning to the 
careful and sympathetic reader to-day. 

So when we read that God rested after 
man had been created, and not before, we 
do not think so much of a physical cre- 
ation, and not at all of a God working 
around in the world as a contractor might 
be busy with a house until it was ready 
for tenancy; we think of the importance 
of man, of his place in the universe, of 
his relation to the Almighty, that in the 
mind of the Biblical writer there could 
be no break in the work of creation, no 
rest from its arduous labors, until man 
appeared. Because God, as it were, waited 
for man to come, do we have a flood of 
light thrown not only upon the importance 
and nature of man, but also upon the na- 
ture, yes, and the needs, of God. 

There are some who would have us be- 
lieve that our world is the result of a 
blindly working series of inanimate forces, 
» 129 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

That behind the world as we see it is not 
mind, but matter, and that the orderly on- 
going of the world is not due to a guiding 
intelligence, but to a reign of law. The 
wind will turn a windmill and a stream 
of water will make the water-wheel revolve. 
Back of the wind and back of the water 
is a force under the control of law, and 
this force will operate according to cer- 
tain laws of the universe in spite of every 
opinion or opposition to the contrary. 
We need not go far to find the reign of 
law and to conclude that certain things 
are simply because they are. But why 
should we be asked to believe that behind 
these laws there is no intelligent person- 
ality giving expression to Himself in or- 
derly procedure? When we look at the 
water-wheel turning in willing response to 
the impulse of the mountain stream we 
may have in mind the law of gravitation 
and the power of natural forces. But as 
we really consider the water-wheel we 

130 



1 



GOD EESTING. 

think of a mind that conceived it and of 
human hands which constructed it. As it 
turns, our thought is led on further to 
the purpose for which it was made to turn, 
and we see men at work in sawmills or 
at looms. And the last thought of the 
power resident in the water and the law 
of gravitation is of the man, the person- 
ality, the living, breathing being who has 
a mind to conceive and a hand to carry- 
out. 

Now, if the power, the possibilities of a 
stream of water lead us on irresistibly to 
a personality for whose use evidently the 
water stream and the law of falling bodies 
were brought into existence, ought our 
minds not also be led back to another Per- 
sonality bringing life out of death, order 
out of chaos, light out of darkness? If we 
do not so believe, then we must declare 
that lifeless matter, which has come from 
nobody knows where, can issue in living 
forms under a process of law which no 
131 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

intelligence lias conceived or made opera- 
tive. In simple words, we mnst insist that 
from nothing something can come. It is 
not sufficient, therefore, to say that when 
we speak of Grod we mean a force or energy 
which is forever at work and brings to 
pass all the phenomena of the world as 
we know them. Human striving after 
reality demands something more. It de- 
mands a personality as well as a force, 
a mind as well as a law, a will as well as 
an orderly ongoing. And so when we are 
told that God was active until man was 
created, we have what the human heart 
demands, a personal God. For man, think- 
ing, willing, doing, with powers and ca- 
pacities seemingly commensurate with do- 
minion over the natural world, is incon- 
ceivable, is nonsense, without a God think- 
ing, willing, doing, with infinite powers, 
eternal capacities. The personality of 
man can be explained only in the person- 
ality of God. In the very dawn of the 

132 



GOD RESTING. 

Hebrew consciousness this stupendous 
truth is grasped. And it means more 
rather than less to us because it was set 
forth in words of poetry. For the poet 
touches the deep springs of life as the 
prose writer never can. His imagery 
makes us forget the weary road of logic 
and enables us to leap with Him into the 
very center of divine truth. To the fact 
of the personality of God we have, also 
in poetry, the completing truth — the love 
and care of a Heavenly Father: 

Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 

Back of the flour the mill; 
Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower 

And the sun and the Father^s will. 

But personality implies communion. 
Man can not live alone. He needs com- 
panionship. And in seeking his com- 
panions he draws on the deepest resources 
and susceptibilities of his inner life. He 
would not only have true companions, he 
must have congenial companions, men and 

133 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

women who can inspire, nplift, ennoble 
him. The deep in his sonl must be an- 
swered by the deeps in the souls of others. 
Else he is alone on an uninhabited and 
untillable island. Man finds the compan- 
ionship he seeks, he makes friends and can 
commune with them. He can interchange 
his thoughts and his feelings with their 
thoughts and feelings. The truer the 
friend, however, the more inspiring the 
intercourse, the more irresistible is the 
mind, the heart drawn to a higher, a deeper 
communion, the soul of man would speak 
with the soul of God. Again we turn to 
the Hebrew Scriptures for the truest ex- 
pression of this longing: ^^As the hart 
panteth after the water brook so panteth 
my soul after Thee, God.'^ ^^Whom 
have I in heaven but Thee, and there is 
none on earth beside Thee.^' 

When we think of God, the Supreme 
Personal Being, lending Himself to such 
approaches by man. He comes near to His 

134 



GOD EESTING. 

world. Transcendent He is as we see His 
presence on every mountain-top, in every 
valley, abroad on the ocean, shining in the 
skies, painting the lilies, coloring the sea- 
shells, silvering the moon and the stars. 
But indwelling is He also, the very life 
of the flower, the light of the sun, the 
energy of the soul. Man can commune 
with Him, for closer is He than breathing 
and nearer than hands and feet. In Him 
man finds satisfaction of his need for the 
communal life; his spiritual life is deep- 
ened, his soul's longing intensified, as he 
approaches the Father; the fluttering 
heart is stilled, the heaving breast is 
quieted, fears are calmed, sorrows are 
driven away, the heavy loads of daily life 
lightened. No wonder Jesus said, ^^Come 
unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." For His 
rest was in communion with the Father. 

Communing with God, we learn also how 
to commune with man. We understand the 
135 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

essentials, we learn to know each other, 
we can even dispense with oral expres- 
sions of our thoughts, and learn what 
the other is thinking about because we have 
so intimately related ourselves to Him in 
communion. Hearts beat in unison, lives 
center in the same purposes and needs, 
wills are directed to the furthering of the 
same ends because souls answer to souls 
as they answer to the Infinite Soul. Blind 
eyes are opened, palsied feet grow firm, 
trembling hands are steadied, faltering lips 
are emboldened as the life flows from the 
soul of the Eternal into the souls of wait- 
ing men and women. 

Communion with an ever-living, ever- 
present God and Father — this is why the 
Creator was active in His creation until 
man was brought forth. But communion 
implies revelation. Here is another evi- 
dence, not only of the personality of God, 
but of the purpose He had in creating 
man. The greatest joy we have is in tell- 

136 



GOD BESTING. 

ing another some good thing, and if that 
good thing will work to his benefit our 
joy is unbounded. A light brighter than 
even the heavenly lights, as they sparkle 
with such transcendent brilliance, shines 
in the eyes of many a man and woman as 
he or she gives to make another happy. 
We have been recipients of such benefi- 
cence, and our hearts have leaped and 
bounded as we realized the love which 
prompted the giving. "We have cared more 
for the giver than for the gift. For that 
other has revealed himself or herself to 
us and we have understood. So God re- 
veals Himself to His creatures and they 
understand. In His presence is fullness 
of joy, at His right hand are pleasures 
for evermore. But it is not these so much 
which we covet and from which we benefit. 
It is the revelation we have of God, the 
glimpse we have of His Father-soul, as He 
opens up to us His heart and shows us His 
love. 

137 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

Then, too, we can understand and ap- 
preciate the teaching, the learning of one 
who is wiser, more experienced than we 
if we are in intimate fellowship and com- 
mnnion with him. The lessons that are 
best learned, the impressions that are most 
lasting and influencing are those the child 
receives at his mother's knee. A lasting 
blessing comes to childhood, and later man 
and womanhood, from the mother who is 
wise as well as loving, firm as well as kind, 
who can give what is best and truest of 
her mother-heart to her inquiring and 
trusting child. So God, who is infinite 
love, all-comprehending experience, teaches 
us our lessons, leads us into the way, the 
truth, the life. "We learn of Him because 
we have communed with Him so closely, 
because we wait so constantly before Him. 
We continue in His life, we come to know 
His truth, and it is His truth alone that 
makes us free. 

Again, we are reproved most effectually 
138 



GOD EESTING. 

by the one who loves ns most and whom 
we love most. He knows ns most inti- 
mately, we care greatly for his good 
opinion of ns. His very presence is a re- 
vealing sonrce of what we onght to be and 
do. We wonld not have his enter dis- 
approval of onr acts, and far less wonld 
we have his inner, unexpressed displeas- 
ure. Everything that is good in him ap- 
peals to ns. How much more so does the 
ever-loving Father reveal to ns onr weak- 
ness, pnt ns on onr gnard, and by prompt- 
ing ns to show and do onr best and truest, 
impart to us the strength to accomplish 
right ends and effectualize pure motives. 
He reveals Himself to us by the very power 
of His love, that power of love which we 
experience when we commune with Him. 
As we receive this revelation all other 
revelations are added unto us. As leaven 
is an energy which leavens the whole lump, 
so is the revelation of God which comes 
to us as we partake of His love and re- 

139 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

spond to it, the potentializing power which 
holds the solution of this world's and our 
life's problems. And as we become con- 
scious of this power we can wait for the 
unfolding of the mysteries as the leafless 
tree can wait for the springtime and the 
stalk of grain for the autumn. 

To let man commune with God so that 
God could reveal Himself to man, this is 
the truth that was glimpsed in the day- 
dawn of Hebrew aspiration when the 
writer unfolds to us the fact that the Cre- 
ator was active in His creation until man, 
a responsive soul, appeared. For this 
reason God exalted man and raised him 
above every living creature, giving him 
capacities to conquer himself and hold in 
his hands the guiding and restraining reins 
of nature. 

But there is a concluding thought about 
God resting. Using the naive language of 
the narrative : God was active in His cre- 
ation, working with might and main, bring- 

140 



GOD EESTING. 

ing a world into existence fit for man's 
habitation and development. When this 
was finished and man had not only been 
created, but given dominion over the world, 
then God, satisfied with His work — that it 
was good— -rested from all His work which 
He had made. Notice, He first blesses man, 
the male and the female which He had 
created, and then He says, ^^Be fruitful 
and multiply and replenish the earth and 
subdue it, and have dominion over every 
living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
As though He should have said: I have 
made the earth and all that is in it for 
you; I now give it to you, take it; My 
labors have ended, yours have begun. A 
father builds up a magnificent business, 
and at an age when he should retire, he 
calls his sons who have been active with 
him some years and says to them. This 
is now your business; conduct it. This 
very inadequate, and yet, perhaps, start- 
ling illustration makes the thought of the 

141 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

writer clear and gives us his idea of the 
presence and activity of God in His world. 
"We need not go far underneath to find 
the fundamental truth. God can make a 
world for man, give him all the possibili- 
ties and opportunities to possess and en- 
joy that world. But man himself must 
realize it, he must make his own world, he 
must take what is given him, manage it 
and bring it under subjection, and in the 
process develop his own powers and hidden 
resources. The father retires from his 
business, giving it over to his boys, but 
he is still present; he is there to advise, 
to suggest, and even although he travels 
into a far country, his spirit remains be- 
hind. Again and again this controls the 
actions of the sons ; what would father do 
in this case? they will ask; what did he 
actually do in such matters? And the in- 
spiration and the guiding principle will be 
present and active. So God, although He 

143 



GOD RESTING. 

laid down the actual work which is for man 
to do when man came into existence, still 
is present, His Spirit is all-pervasive, His 
counsels can be known by communing with 
* Him. 

Or to take, perhaps, a better illustration. 
A father shows his boy how to do a cer- 
tain thing. He takes him- so far in the 
process, as far as he thinks necessary. 
Then he says. Now you go on and learn 
how to finish it. By and by the boy comes 
and says, ^^I can not go on, I do not know 
how to do this or that part of it.'' The 
father takes the matter in hand ; if the boy 
really can not proceed alone, he instructs 
him further; but if he can, he says, ^^You 
are able; work it out yourself." So God 
takes us step by step. He is resting from 
all labors which we can and must do; all 
power is given into our hands. But if we 
really can not proceed, if we really are not 
able to subdue and conquer, then He bends 

143 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

His ear and lends His hands as we come 
to Him, and is a very jDresent help in time 
of actual need. 

Xow, this is the piinciple according to 
which God has been ruled from the begin- 
ning. In a real sense. He has rested from 
all the work which He has made. He has 
given the world to man and has expected 
him to subdue it. And man has responded 
to his task. The histories of civilization 
and of intellectual development read like 
miraculous accounts when they show how 
man has been superior to his surroundings, 
has controlled the laws of nature, adapting 
himself to extremes of cold and heat, bring- 
ing the unyielding ground to fertility, mov- 
ing by the power of faith over and through 
impassable mountains, until climate and 
soil and all untoward elements were under 
subjection. The continent of Europe, 
which can be called a fruitful garden to- 
day, would have remained a morass, a 
waste, a dark continent intellectually and 

144 



GOD BESTING- 

morally, had it not been for the faith and 
the force resident in man to make it fer- 
tile for physical and spiritual life. And 
what would this land of ours be to-day had 
not the Pilgrim Fathers subdued it? The 
physical world, the mental, the moral, the 
spiritual world is only a potentiality for 
us; we must realize it and make it our 
own. Go in and possess it, comes the Scrip- 
tural command, for ye are well able to. 
We may be sure God will not do our work 
for us. 

So God rests as He waits for us to labor 
to bring forth the harvest which He has 
made possible. He would have us come 
into our own. He would have us develop 
as we subdue the untamed in us, as we 
work out our destinies, as we finish the 
work which He has given us to do. But 
how inertly we respond to the task, how 
indifferently we receive the inheritance, 
how stubbornly we refuse to be guided by 
His Spirit, how often we waste our sub- 
i« 145 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

stance and come to grief! God waits for 
the manifestation of His sons, and so 
patiently is He waiting for them that all 
nature groaneth and travaileth for the sons 
of God to show themselves worthy of the 
love and confidence of the Father. In man 
alone could God see His likeness, with man 
alone could God commune, to man alone 
could God reveal Himself. Now He waits 
for man's response. 



146 



IX. 

THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

The dialogue of the boy Samuel with the 
Lord is one of the most tender touches 
in the Old Testament. We are impressed 
with grandeur and awe as we hear Jehovah 
on Sinai thundering out His laws to Moses ; 
a sense of commiseration comes over us 
as we hear Elijah in the desert telling 
God of his sorry plight; with Jeremiah 
we are tempted to wail and lament as he 
brings his grievances to God, who seems 
to have abandoned Israel. But with the 
child Samuel, in the dead of night, lying 
near the ark of the Lord in the dim light 
of the temple lamp, we are in sympathetic 
accord and are moved by the simplicity 
and trusting faith of the young lad. Three 

147 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

times we see him roused from deep slum- 
ber by a strange sound, and listening in- 
tently, thinking his aged master, Eli, has 
called, run obediently to him saying, ^^Here 
I am," ready to minister unto him. And 
three times he runs back to his cot. Awak- 
ened a fourth time, he hastens again to 
Eli, and is told that the Lord is speaking 
and he should listen. Then he answers, 
^^ Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." 
It was an important word he was to 
hear. Eli, the priest at the temple of 
the Lord, had grown old indulging his two 
wayward sons in their every wish and giv- 
ing over to them unrightly his priestly 
functions, until the temple service was 
thoroughly debauched and the worship of 
God profaned. The moment had come 
when the priest was to be deposed and 
the sons punished. So the inspired writer 
takes this naive but effective method of 
showing how the wrath of a just God must 
be visited upon a sinning people. It has 

148 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

a religious value for us that is well worth 
considering. Like all religious language, 
it is poetical and imaginative. "We find 
that the earliest writers of Hebrew litera- 
ture were content to state their facts with 
little or no religious coloring, but that 
those writing three or four centuries later, 
after or during those great periods of re- 
ligious intensity that so mark the develop- 
ment of the Israelitish people, were deeply 
imbued with the religious and spiritual 
sense of all outward phenomena and his- 
torical fact. So they spoke the inspired 
language of God's poets and made the deep 
truths of God known. 

Tennyson tells us to speak to God, for 
closer is He to us than breathing and 
nearer than hands and feet. We do speak 
to Him, but not as though He were physic- 
ally present in form and voice as a mere 
man. God speaks to us and tells us that 
our sin will be punished and our goodness 
rewarded, but not with the audible voice 
149 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

of human speecli. God is Spirit and in 
spirit He reveals Himself to His children. 
Thus He talks with us, and thus He talked 
with Moses and Samuel and Isaiah. He 
is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, 
with whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning. If we should insist, 
therefore, that God came in times of old 
and spoke to men with an audible voice 
we should have to insist that God must 
speak to us in an audible voice to-day, 
and as He does not so speak to us, we 
then should be forced to conclude that God 
is less near to His world and His children 
than He was in times past, that He has 
left this world and His children to their 
fate. 

This is not the method or the will of a 
God who changeth not, who is near to every 
one of His creatures. He spoke to Samuel 
just as surely as our friend speaks to us, 
but it was in the language of that day. 
He spoke just as truly to Paul, but it was 

150 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

in the language of that day. He spoke to 
Savonarola and Luther and Huss and 
Wickliffe and Wesley and Phillips Brooks, 
but it was in the language of the days in 
which these men lived. Had He not used 
the language of their day, these men could 
not have understood Him, and could they 
have understood Him, they could not have 
made His word known to their fellow-men 
without speaking in the language of their 
day. So the God and Father of the human 
soul speaks to each generation in the lan- 
guage of that generation, and the listen- 
ing soul hears and understands. It need 
only to say, ^^ Speak, Lord, for Thy serv- 
ant heareth.'' ^^ There is no speech or 
language where His voice is not heard. His 
line is gone out through all the earth and 
His words unto the end of the world." 
God's language must be a universal lan- 
guage, for while there are divers languages 
and tongues in the earth, most of His chil- 
dren speak and understand only one 

151 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

tongue. If He were thus hampered, how 
would the people across the seas and in 
the uttermost part of the earth hear Him? 
The English missionary sails to the savage 
islanders, and for days is in danger of be- 
ing torn to pieces, but God is speaking 
through him and the cannibals soon under- 
stand His words. It is a language of gen- 
tleness and fortitude, of kindness and 
bravery, of self-sacrifice and love. It is 
God's language and is soon translated into 
the human speech of those benighted peo- 
ple. They hear it, they read it, they under- 
stand it. 

God speaks and has ever spoken His 
varied language. The first man, talking 
with Him about his disobedience in the 
Garden of Eden story, heard Him. The sin- 
crushed soul pleading this moment for re- 
lief hears and is heard by the Almighty. 
We have God pictured as walking in the 
cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden 
and searching out and speaking to the man 

152 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

who has disobeyed His commands and is 
hiding from Him, and are apt to feel that 
this is the only way God can approach 
and speak to us. We have never seen or 
heard Him in this manner, and conclude 
that God is as far away from us as the 
farthest star in space. Because we would 
see Him in person and hear Him audibly, 
do we so often cry out bitterly with Car- 
lyle, ^^If God would only speak again in 
these days as He has spoken in other 
days." Yet the voice of God is not silent 
to-day. He only does not hear Him who 
has not come into His presence and said, 
^^ Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.'^ 
Those living several miles from the ferry 
landing in a Western city can distinctly 
hear the whistles of the boats as they sound 
every half -hour on leaving, while those en- 
gaged in daily pursuits in the heart of the 
city, only a few blocks from the ferries, 
seldom hear the whistles. They blow just 
the same, but in the noise and bustle of 
153 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

the streets their sound is completely dead- 
ened. So we can hear the voice of God 
coming out of the stillness of the past, 
but fail to hear it in the turmoil and con- 
fusion of the present. It was in the cool 
of the evening hour when Grod spoke to 
the man in the Garden about his disobe- 
dience, and to Abraham concerning the de- 
struction of Sodom; it was in the solitude 
of the wilderness that He spoke to Moses 
at the burning bush, and to Elijah under 
the juniper tree; it was in the stillness 
of night that He spoke to Jacob at 
Beth-el, the ^^ House of God,'' and to 
Samuel in the sanctuary of his Lord. 
These sons of God were ready to listen, 
and therefore they heard. The waiting 
soul to-day, ministering unto the Lord, as 
Samuel did, will hear His voice. 

Man is religious. How he came to be, 
why he is so, are questions we can not 
definitely answer. The fact remains that 
the essential element of man's nature is 

154 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

religious. Eeligion implies dependence. 
As a religious being man is forever striv- 
ing to put his life in harmony with the 
power on which he is dependent. The only 
means of approach he has to this power 
is that of petition. In ordinary life we 
are continually dependent upon others. 
When we stop to consider, it is surprising 
how little we can do without petitioning 
our friends and neighbors for assistance. 
We may do this openly and grossly care- 
less of the proprieties, and be classed as 
mere beggars. But even when we have 
maintained our dignity and worth we re- 
main dependent upon others, and at least 
tacitly crave their help. We need the 
friendship, the love, the sympathetic com- 
panionship of others. This we silently ask 
for. Often do we need the material help, 
advice, suggestion, consolation, encourage- 
ment which we can get only from our 
friends and loved ones. We do not ask 
openly and supinely, we simply pray for it 

155 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

in our actions toward those whom we can 
trust. 

Herein lies the difference between beg- 
ging and prayer. The beggar habitually 
asks, not intending to give anything in 
return; the prayerful heart is ready to 
give even more than it can receive, and 
therefore the prayer is answered. Shake- 
speare says : 

We do pray for mercy, 

And that same prayer doth teach 

ns all to render 
The deeds of mercy. 

This is the true definition of prayer. Put- 
ting ourselves in thorough sympathy with 
our friends, subjecting ourselves to them, 
entreating them for their help because we 
have made ourselves worthy of it, and to 
share with others even more than our 
friends can give. Praying for mercy, but 
rendering the deeds of mercy. This is 
what prayer in the religious sense must 
be : to enter into spiritual communion with 

156 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

God, to be His minister, His servant, ready 
to listen when He speaks. Emerson says : 
^^Tou need not speak to me, I need not 
go where you are, that yon should exert 
magnetism on me. Be yon only whole and 
sufficient, and I shall feel you in every part 
of my life and fortune, and I can as easily 
dodge the gravitation of the globe as es- 
cape your influence." If this is true of 
man, who is never whole and sufficient, but 
who can worthily influence us even al- 
though we have never seen nor heard him, 
how much more is this true of God, who 
is perfectly whole and sufficient and who 
for evermore has made Himself felt in 
every part of the life and fortune of 
sainted men and women and whom we can 
no more escape than the law of gravita- 
tion. 

A keenly spiritualized French writer 
speaks of prayer as the commerce between 
God and man. Commerce means exchange, 
exchange of goods, merchandise, property 

157 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

of any kind. Commerce with God just as 
truly means exchange ; taking the God-life 
in our life and giving ourselves to God. 
Our commerce with God is a relationship 
which lasts through all our vicissitudes 
and conditions, both of life and death. Un- 
like the commerce with man, where our 
profit may be small and uncertain, our com- 
merce with God means nothing but gain 
to ourselves and in such a measure as to 
make us lack nothing. 

In his holy and pure moments man 
hears the voice of God, soothing and 
reassuring. In his sinful moments also 
he hears God's voice. The difference 
is that in the one case he welcomes 
God's voice and is glad to hear it; 
His Word is true from the beginning, a 
lamp unto his feet and a light unto his 
path. In the other case he would rather 
not hear God speak. As the disobedient 
Israelites said to Moses, '^ Speak thou with 
us and we will hear ; but let not God speak 

158 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

with us lest we die;'' so would man whose 
sins are uncovered rather not hear the 
voice of the Almighty. But God speaks 
even to the man who has lost the right 
way and is selling his soul in Vanity Fair. 
Among those who have defective hearing 
are many whose eardrums are thickened, 
who can not hear ordinary speech, but, 
strange to say, can understand what is said 
in a noisy place. The unusual concussion 
of the noises makes their eardrums vi- 
brate as they do not in normal conditions. 
There are men who are deaf to the or- 
dinary calls of life and duty, who will re- 
spond only to the thunders of threatening. 
So God speaks to them. In the lightning's 
flash and the thunder's roar He appeared 
on Sinai, and the disobedient children of 
Israel down in the valley heard His voice 
and quailed before Him. It was as the 
judgment day for them, and they hastened 
to hear His word. 

This is not the way God would speak. 
159 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

He would have His children hear Him 
normally. He would have their soul's ears 
so naturally keyed to His spiritual utter- 
ance that every one of them would in- 
stinctively hear. He would rather not 
come with the loudly crashing voice of 
calamity, forcing His children to hear and 
turn to Him. He would have His chil- 
dren ever in His presence, where it would 
be as natural for them to say, ^^ Speak, 
Lord, for Thy servant heareth," as it 
would be to breathe or love. His children 
hear His voice. He calleth His own by 
name, for they know His voice. 

If we would converse with God, carry 
on a dialogue with Him, we must put away 
all our presuppositions that He is far from 
us and not to be known, and go to Him, 
dwell in His courts, as the child Samuel 
did, believing that He is in our very souls. 
Willingness to hear and readiness to obey: 
these are the two conditions on which 
man's relation to God must depend. We 

160 



THE DIALOGUE WITH GOD. 

worship God ignorantly when we assume 
that He is far from us and not ready to 
speak with us face to face. We worship 
Him in spirit and in truth when He enters 
into and qmckens our innermost being, 
when we turn to Him and say, ^^ Speak, 
Lord, for Thy servant heareth.'^ 



161 



X. 

ON HOLY GEOUND. 

The Jews were in the habit of looking for 
the sacred in the secular. They expected 
manifestations of God anywhere and every- 
where. They walked softly and in awe, 
as though they were in the immediate 
presence of the Almighty. No wonder, 
then, that they saw and appreciated many 
of the deep and hidden things of life which 
people who come after neither saw nor 
sensed. No wonder that they threw such 
sanctity around the name of God that it 
was profanity even to speak His name. 
No wonder that they saw Him in the burn- 
ing hedge and that every wayside busH 
was aflame with His presence. For He was 
near to them, and they were never sur- 
prised when He seemed to come to them 

163 



ON HOLY GROUND. 

in the form of some visitant and spoke 
audibly with them. They recognized that 
He was good and they looked to Him for 
every beneficence. They also believed that 
He was terrible, and in their primitive way 
of thinking, expected immediate death to 
follow an actual vision of God. So He 
came to them in the form of angels. No 
one could see the face of God and live. 
Even Isaiah in his remarkable experience 
in the temple cried that he was undone 
because his eyes had seen the Lord. 

And yet this aspect of terribleness whicE 
the children of Israel predicated of God is 
only another evidence of how truly and 
deeply they understood Him, and how 
clearly and incisively they were able to 
express their views of Him. As we think 
of God there is a sense in which He does 
seem terrible. We are not surprised to 
hear one of the psalmists saying that God 
is terrible in His doing toward the children 
of men, and that ^^Men should praise His 
163 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

terrible name and say unto Him, How ter- 
rible Thon art ! " It was a fearful thing in 
their eyes to fall into the hands of the 
living God. And yet this expression of 
fear is but an appreciation of the sacred- 
ness of God and of the sanctity of His 
presence. If these are outraged, how else 
can God be but terrible? And if He is 
defied, how can it be otherwise than that 
death must follow? For God in the very 
essence of His nature is unapproachable 
by man. The sun bathes this earth in 
light and fills it with life, but man who 
persists in looking into the face of the stin 
is in danger of becoming blind. The sun 
says in effect. Shade your eyes when you 
would look at me, for you dare not look 
too closely. So there is the holy of holies 
into which even man in the high priesthood 
of his best self dare not enter. Draw not 
nigh hither, and even where thou stand- 
est remove thy shoes, for the place is holy. 
God calls attention to the sanctity of 
164 



ON HOLY GEOUND. 

His Being, which we profane only at our 
peril. His teaching in this regard we can 
understand if we will bnt open our eyes. 
"We have been breasting ourselves in re- 
cent years because of the way we are con- 
trolling natural resources. We talk in 
stock phrases about harnessing Niagara, 
and chaining the lightning, and bridging 
the ocean by steam. Our achievements in 
inventive skill and mechanical progress 
read like fairy tales. We are swung over 
the sea of ice that eternally covers the 
slopes of the Jungfrau, for example, and 
believe, although our eyes are not yet able 
to see, that a tunnel will soon pierce to the 
heart of this mountain and an elevator lift 
the sightseer to the very tip of the snow- 
clad summit. But every now and then, as 
the result of accident, a warning comes 
to draw not nigh thither, that the ground 
is sacred only for the tread of the Al- 
mighty. We have been sailing through the 
air lately with such security and at so 
165 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

rapid a pace as to become some what in- 
different to the fact that only an intangible 
ether and not the solid earth is immedi- 
ately below us. But ever and anon the 
warning comes terribly, yes, death-deal- 
ingly, that the precincts of the air are too 
sacred as yet for the vulgar trespass of 
man. 

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado may 
be nothing more than a mere name to many. 
But there is nothing like unto it upon the 
whole known earth. The psalmist speaks 
of the tree planted by the river of water 
which bringeth forth its fruit in due season. 
But here in this great canyon, which is 
so long and so wide and so deep that no 
description can give even a faint idea of 
its stupendousness and wholly unlikeness 
to any other wonderful feature of nature, 
flows a river which baffles every approach 
of man and refuses every aid to cultiva- 
tion. Instead of making the soil about it 
fertile, it draws all the moisture out of the 

166 



ON HOLY GEOUND. 

land for miles around. A man perishing 
with thirst may stand on the rim of the 
canyon and see rivers of water flowing 
past him, and yet die for any drop which 
he could procure of it. Every expedition 
which has been made to follow its course 
and explore the recesses of the canyon 
has resulted in death and dismay. If any- 
where in nature there is a spot where the 
Almighty says, ^^Draw not nigh hither," 
it is here. As we rode down more than 
five thousand feet over the steep and nar- 
row trails seven miles to the river, or sat 
on the plateau two thousand feet sheer 
down to the water's edge, or stood upon 
the rim of the canyon and looked upon 
a scene which man's eyes can see nowhere 
else, I seemed to be hearing again and 
again the voice saying, ^^Take thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the ground on which 
thou standest is holy ground." God was 
speaking, and man would be deaf indeed 
did he not heed His voice. He is terrible 

1G7 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

here. But in this very terribleness we see 
the beauty of His nature and the tender- 
ness of His love. The smith can strike 
a powerful blow upon the anvil. But that 
arm never seems so strong as when it en- 
folds the helpless and trusting child. As 
the blow is struck the father says, in effect, 
*^Draw not nigh hither, this is no place 
for you; here I must show my power and 
do my work.'' So the arm of God is ter- 
rible as it lifts up the mountains and hol- 
lows out the valleys. But all the strength 
that goes into these titanic labors is pres- 
ent as He encircles His children and draws 
them to His Father-heart. Man is mighty 
in his powers to subdue the earth, but 
God is mightier in creating and upholding 
it. And He still maintains possession over 
vast domains which as yet are too holy for 
man's profane foot. He holds us at a 
proper distance and keeps us humble and 
reverent. When we consider His heavens, 
therefore, the work of His fingers; the 

168 



ON HOLY GEOUND. 

moon and the stars which He has ordained, 
^^What is man," we cry, ^^that Then art 
mindful of him, and the son of man that 
Thou visitest himT^ 

As in nature, so in the deeper things 
of life there is a sanctity we must observe. 
Here are those intimate personal relations 
which go to the very soul of our being. 
Would we analyze friendship? Would we 
ask why we love each other? If we would, 
and insisted upon doing so, we would de- 
stroy the fragrance of the flower, as the 
botanist might do in pulling it to pieces, 
but, unlike the botanist, we would know no 
more about the flower. For love is un- 
analyzable. As soon as we draw near to 
scrutinize it we hear the unmistakable 
voice, ^^Draw not nigh hither; take thy 
shoes from off thy feet, for the ground on 
which thou standest is holy." Here we 
are in the domain of the sacred. If we 
are ruthless and push our quest, we pro- 
fane the holiest of our instincts and sus- 
169 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ceptibilities and do not add to our knowl- 
edge; if we are reverent and wait with 
bowed heads in the holy place, we are soon 
aware of a pervading presence which won- 
derfully glorifies our vision, and we begin 
to feel on understanding terms with the 
unknowable. We become known even as 
we are known, but so sacred is our knowl- 
edge that we do not attempt to express it. 
We revolt at the thought of spiritual 
vivisection, the laying bare of the inmost 
feelings, the observing of the heartbeat of 
our friends, during which they must remain 
unconscious. Because this is so unthink- 
able our loving Father has made it im- 
possible, and in this has revealed to us the 
nature of His own tender heart. We thank 
Him that He has dealt so kindly with us, 
that He has given us faculties to feel every 
shade of love and friendship and hold them 
so sacred as never to violate or trespass 
upon their godly precincts. A striking il- 
lustration of this fact we find in the biog- 

170 



ON HOLY GEOUND. 

raphy of Alice Freeman Palmer. Here 
was a relationship of admiration, of re- 
spect, of love, of veneration wMcli is sacred 
ground for the author in every page of the 
book. Coarse and profane and unfeeling 
would the narrative have been had the 
writer attempted to analyze the life of this 
soul. To him the voice did not need to 
cry, ^^Draw not nigh hither; put thy shoes 
from off thy feet, for the ground on which 
thou standest is holy ground.'^ A wor- 
shiper at the sacred shrine of love and 
nobility, he derived the power to express 
the life of this notable woman in such 
words that they will remain a classic of 
penetration and discrimination and re- 
serve in portraying the deepest phase of 
a human life. 

When we try to solve life's great in- 
tellectual problems we hear the cry, Draw 
not nigh hither. We can not climb the 
highest peak of the intellect, there is no 
aeroplane capable of circling through the 
171 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

mental atmosphere at will. There are 
forces which hold the mind at bay just as 
the Colorado River defies man's approach. 
We are on sacred gromid as we push the 
mind's quest. For the intellect is limited, 
it is not capable of coming to the very seat 
of the Almighty. "When it approaches too 
near the voice rings out unmistakably, 
^^Draw not nigh hither.'' It takes us a 
long time, sometimes, to learn this fact. 
As we think we can annihilate space and 
break down all the barriers that hold us 
from controlling natural resources, so do 
we think we can disregard the holy con- 
fines of the Most High and read His mind. 
Carlyle protested against the effrontery of 
certain men who, he said, talked as though 
God was their next-door neighbor and they 
were intimately acquainted with all His 
affairs. It is well for us to heed the pro- 
test of the rugged Scotch philosopher, for 
he well knew how sacred were the pre- 
cincts of the Eternal Mind and how man 

172 



ON HOLY GEOUND. 

profaned the Most High when he drew 
near. Well does Tennyson, in his ^^ An- 
cient Sage/^ show that the most familiar 
of truths are incapable of proof: 

Thou canst not prove the nameless, 0, my son, 
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in. 
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone 
N"or canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one. 
Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no 
Nor yet, that thou art mortal, nay, my son. 
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee 
Art not thyself in converse with thyself. 
For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 
Nor yet disproved, wherefore thou be wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt 
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith. 

To cling to Faith, here is the wisdom of 
the Ancient Sage. Job throws at God a 
dozen questions, and God sends back a 
hundred riddles ; and Job finds peace. For 
he discovers he is on sacred ground, and 
God tells him unmistakably not to profane 
it. And his life becomes a poem of praise 

173 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

as lie clings to the snnnier side of doubt 
and shows ^^the sanity of living a life of 
trust in a world which we can not under- 
stand." For our ^^ keenest knowledge can 
not compass a tithe of the wonders that 
lie at [our] feet." And yet the very fact 
that God holds us from Him in this sense 
draws us very near to Him. It is the 
illustration of the smithy and his strong 
arm over again. In His wisdom God is 
so strong that He outdistances us as the 
wings of the wind outdistance the crawl of 
the snail, but in love He is so tender that 
He careth for us. ^^Like a father pitieth 
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear Him, for He knoweth our frame, He 
remembereth that we are dust. ' ^ 

So we leave a large margin for imagina- 
tion which we call faith, and thank God that 
there are some things which He permits 
us to believe but not see. Thus we are 
saved from pride of intellect and conceit 
of mind, and can combine a positive faith 

174 



II 



ON HOLY GROUND. 

with true hnmility sucli as Tennyson ex- 
pressed when he said of the Ahnighty, ^'I 
hardly dare name His name, but take away 
belief in the self-conscions personality of 
God and you take away the backbone of 
the world. ' ' 

We may question with wand of science 

Explain, deride, discuss, 
But only in meditation 

The mystery speaks to us. 

If we could come to this form of trust, 
if we could thank God that He holds the 
deepest feelings of the soul life too sacred 
to trifle with, if we could recognize His do- 
minion and appreciate how sacred it is, 
our attitude would become reverent, our 
faith positive, our trust unshakable, our 
spirit to obey and follow Him invincible. 



175 



ixi. 

CHEISTIANITY IN THE YEENACULAK. 

Several attempts have been made to estab- 
lish a universal language. They all have 
failed. Very early in the history of man- 
kind, as soon as man began to multiply 
and spread over the earth, was there a 
confusion of tongues. One branch of the 
human race being separated from another 
soon developed a language peculiar to it- 
self. Although we can find in the roots of 
all languages a certain similarity, this 
sameness is not so definitely marked as 
to give us a clue to the original, or at 
one time universal language, if ever such 
there was. Mankind, as far back as we 
know it, always was separated into dif- 
ferent races speaking tongues foreign to 
each other. 

176 



CHRISTIANITY IN VEENACULAE. 

And yet there has always been a native 
or universal language readily understood 
by all peoples. There is a vernacular be- 
longing to the speech that men and women 
everywhere naturally acquire, which they 
understand and are capable of making 
others understand. 

We read this language first in nature — 

To Him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, 
She speaks a various language. 

And this language is always understood. 
The storm is a storm, whether breaking 
in full fury over mountain peak or sweep- 
ing its flood through fertile valley or pil- 
ing waves in towering height on ocean's 
top. The Englishman in India, or the 
Moor in Switzerland, or the Chinaman in 
America understands nature as she thus 
speaks, for nature uses a native and not 
a foreign tongue. The river rolling on 
lazily to the great city or sea, or the lake 

12 1Y7 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

in its mountain fastness mirroring cloud 
and sky and foliage, or the wide-spreading 
elm before the smith's door, or the flower 
modestly planted in a discarded tin can 
or broken dish, or the cattle on a thousand 
hills, or the myriad stars in the flaming 
heaven — all speak a language wondrously 
clear to the devout lover of nature. And 
German, Jap, Italian, Turk, and a hun- 
dred other foreign-born stand side by side 
looking on and say, ^^How hear we every 
man in our own tongue wherein we were 
bornT' 

This universal language is also spoken 
by man in the various expressions of hu- 
man life. Shakespeare tells the whole 
story in his characterization of ' ' Cresida : ' ' 

There ^s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, 
Nay her foot speaks ; her wanton spirits look out 
At every joint and motion of her body. 

Who ever needed to interpret a frown 
or a cry of pain; a tear or an exclama- 

178 



I 



CHEISTIANITY IN VEENACULAE. 

tion of joy; a smile or a heart-piercing 
groan? We walk the crowded and con- 
gested streets of Cairo or Damascus, where 
traffic sweeps on in a rush almost to anni- 
hilate one, and above the noise hear the 
sharp cry of a child fallen under the hoof 
of a horse, and we understand as instantly 
what that child has said as we should did 
such an occurrence take place in our own 
city, in front of our very door. So human 
nature speaks its native language of pain, 
anger, distress, excitement, flippancy, fri- 
volity, calm, seriousness, discrimination, 
gladness, exhilaration, love. And the for- 
eign-born look on and say, ^^How hear we 
every man in our own language wherein 
we were born?'' 

This universal language of nature and 
human life furthermore has had a uni- 
versal interpretation which the devout soul 
can readily understand. The artist comes 
to nature in her manifold moods and takes 
her very soul to put on canvas, and we 

179 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

move slowly through the great galleries, 
forgetting that we are in a building made 
with human hands, heedless of the conver- 
sation or the crowd that may be about 
us, feeling only that we are in God's 
great out-of-doors, and fields and flowers, 
meadow and mountain, lake and river are 
speaking to us, wooing our fervent love. 
"Whether the artist was an Italian or a 
Pole, a Russian or a Swede, or whether 
the scene was on the burning sands of 
the desert or the cool shades of a forest 
interior, whether a mountain in Asia or 
a river in America or a wide-spreading 
field in Tuscany or a view on the Thames, 
we instinctively understand, and with other 
appreciative souls, who also are bathing 
their aesthetic natures in the masterpieces 
of the landscape painter's art, say, ^^How 
hear we all in the language in which we 
were born?" 

Or the artist goes to human life and 
draws therefrom his inspiration, and makes 

180 



CHEISTIANITY IN VERNACULAE. 

the canvas or marble vocal with all the 
manifold expressions of human nature. 
We stand before Leonardo da Vinci's 
^^Mona Lisa" and need not be told that 
so wonderfully has the artist depicted this 
woman in her gentle grace and charm that 
she seems to have stepped out of life and 
is ready to engage us in winsome and 
captivating converse. We look at Eem- 
brandt's Samson demanding his wife from 
his father-in-law when the latter in Sam- 
son's absence had given her to another 
man. As we see Samson storming with- 
out, with raised fist and angry countenance, 
and his father-in-law fearsomely looking 
from the window within, we need not be 
told that trouble is brewing, even though 
we may not know what the picture is sup- 
posed to represent. Strolling through the 
royal galleries in Berlin, we stop suddenly 
arrested before a marble statue. A woman 
reclines in the roadside against a mile- 
stone, a little bundle of clothing beside 
181 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

her, a child on her bosom peacefully sleep- 
ing. As we look at the distressed face 
of the mother, thoroughly exhausted, too 
much so to sleep calmly, we need not 
be told that she came a long way and has 
a long way to go, for the very stone speaks. 
How we yearn to assist her and make her 
lot a more easy one. Whether we pass 
that figure once or a dozen times, the 
same feeling comes over us. That marble 
speaks, it speaks a universal language, 
and we understand. So the artist catches 
all the delicate shades of human expres- 
sion and puts them in stone or in a frame, 
and appreciative souls look on and under- 
stand each in his own tongue. 

As the artist, so also does the musician 
interpret nature and human life in uni- 
versal speech. There is a language here. 
Music hath charms and throws her spell 
over all mankind. We sit and listen to 
the oratorio or the symphony, the violinist 
or the singer, and a flow of feeling comes 

182 



CHRISTIANITY IN VEENACULAR. 

rushing over us, memories of scenes and 
faces crowd upon us, we are living in the 
past, the years have thrown a halo over 
our childhood and youth and we live them 
again in golden dreams. Or we are 
projected into the future. "We look upon 
that which might be, the years expand be- 
fore us, we walk as in marble halls, amid 
fragrant odors and past cooling fountains. 
We forget the present, the daily toils and 
cares, the disappointments, the circum- 
scribed outlooks. For at that moment the 
voice of the Eternal is speaking and we are 
lost in the Great Soul of which we are a 
part and which forever calls us. Music 
speaks its universal language and makes 
the deepest depths of man's being re- 
sponsive. We listen and exclaim, ^'How 
hear we every man in our own tongue in 
which we were born?" 

Now, it needs no word to say that tliis 
universal language is the soul-language; 
the soul of the Eternal revealing itself to 

183 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

the soul of man; the soul of man responsive 
to the revelation. Why did the believers 
in Jesus at Pentecost understand each 
other! There are two sentences which give 
us a clue to the whole situation. The one 
reads, ^^And there were dwelling at Jeru- 
salem Jews, devout men out of every 
nation under the sun." Devout Jews who 
had come from all parts of the globe, who 
had heard of Jesus, and who now under- 
stood clearly concerning Him as Peter and 
the other disciples spoke of Him. And 
the other sentence reads, ' ' Others mocking 
said, these men are full of new wine. ' ' On 
one side devout men who heard and be- 
lieved; on the other, skeptics who heard 
and mocked. To a blind man the landscape, 
the picture, the smile mean little; to the 
deaf man the cry, the laugh, the song, 
the symphony mean little; to the brutal 
and heartless the mute appeal for help 
goes unheeded. To understand the Soul 
of the universe man must bring to it a soul 

184 



CHEISTIANITY IN VEENACULAR. 

full charged with sympathetic apprecia- 
tion; to be moved by the soul of religion, 
man must bring his own soul into harmony 
therewith. For soul impressions can be 
made only upon an impressible soul. We 
know how men feel in Timbuctoo or in the 
South Sea Islands because we know how 
we feel wherever we are. One soul is al- 
ways in telegraphic connnunication with 
other souls. This is the very heart of re- 
ligion, and especially Christianity. Jesus 
needed not to be told what was in the mind 
of any man, for He already knew men 
thoroughly. While we can not presume to 
have such a knowledge, we can understand 
the vernacular of Christianity wherever 
spoken, for it is everywhere the same. 
We are told a great preacher years ago 
named Vincent Ferrer, preaching in Span- 
ish, was understood by English, Flemish, 
French, and Italian hearers. While this 
may seem questionable to us who remain 
on the prosaic plane of every-day experi- 
186 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ence, yet it is not at all unreasonable, and 
when properly understood is a verifiable 
fact. Professor Peabody, over his own 
name in the Boston Transcript some years 
ago, wrote of Professor Kuehnemann, who 
was lecturing in German at Harvard, that 
the captivating scholar was so full of his 
subject and had such a command of his 
own language that those little acquainted 
with German could realize what he was 
saying without understanding his words. 
This is merely soul speaking to soul in the 
souPs vernacular. How did the Pilgrims 
make themselves understood at first by the 
Indians? This is a question in early 
Colonial history that we sometimes pass 
over without due thought, when it is full 
of interest. How did the early mission- 
aries make themselves understood by the 
cannibal natives, as these men full of the 
Soul of Christ first set out to convert the 
world? Here again is a law of psychic 
phenomena with universal application. A 

186 



CHEISTIANITY IN VEENACULAR, 

soul charged with the love of Christ some- 
how makes other sympathetic souls under- 
stand, and soon even the unsympathetic are 
impressed. 

A few years ago I sat in a Protestant 
mission house in Rome and listened to a 
sermon in Italian. I understood hardly 
any of the language, but I comprehended 
the whole thought of the speaker. His 
eye, his face, his hand, his whole body 
was speaking, and the sympathetic re- 
sponse in his hearers, their close atten- 
tion, their look and demeanor when he 
pressed his truth home, told a sympathetic 
foreigner only too well that the wonder- 
ful gospel of Jesus Christ was charming 
speaker and spoken-to alike, and the very 
air was charged with the good news. 

A few years later I stood in the Amer- 
ican mission school in the city of Tarsus, 
the birthplace of Saint Paul; I had made 
a few remarks to the students through an 
interpreter, and then two or three of the 
187 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

older young men arose to reply. They 
spoke Turkish. I understood not a word. 
But I needed not the office of an inter- 
preter to tell me what they were saying. 
They had come out of homes in the far 
inland Asia Minor. They had grown to 
manhood without even the rudiments of 
learning. They were quick with a love of 
the Christ and for the generous American 
spirit that would send money and conse- 
crated men and women to teach and train 
them. The light of their eyes, the move- 
ment of their lips, the quivering of their 
whole bodies spoke more plainly to me than 
their words could. I understood, because 
I was carried away with sympathy for that 
whole movement. For the moment, at 
least, my soul was in touch with the great 
soul of the universe which everywhere ex- 
presses itself in just that way, the lifting 
of mankind from its low estate and sending 
it on wings of love to its higher estate. 
Our souls are a part of the Infinite Soul, 
188 



CHEISTIANITY IN VERNACULAR. 

as the wave is a part of the ocean. Lift 
that wave out, set it apart from its real 
element, and it soon evaporates. Leave it 
where it belongs to perform its real task 
and, with a million other waves eternally 
held in the hollow of ocean's hand, it will 
carry the commerce and hnman freight of 
the world. So the soul in tune with the 
Infinite Soul will speak the souPs vernac- 
ular and make itself understood wherever 
a human soul exists. A soul submerged in 
the Soul of Christ will speak the Christian 
vernacular and men everywhere will un- 
derstand. We were all born in the Chris- 
tian vernacular. Do we speak this lan- 
guage so that all can understand? Or is 
our speech foreign and only confusion to 
those with whom we associate? 



189 



XII. 

THE YALLET BETWEEN. 

We understand at once that where two 
mountains face each other there is a valley 
between. Yet we read that at one time 
^^the Philistines stood on a mountain on 
the one side and Israel stood on a moun- 
tain on the other side and there was a 
valley between thein/' It seems useless to 
call attention to this valley. To the writer, 
however, it was a significant fact. So often 
was there a valley between His people and 
their sworn enemy that unconsciously He 
lays strong emphasis upon the valley. For 
had the valley on different occasions not 
been there Israel could never have main- 
tained herself. Long ago would she have 
been ground to dust. 

The valley here stands as an interposi- 
190 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

tion of Providence between Israel and her 
enemy. This valley-between was a fact of 
great importance in the life of Israel; it 
is a fact of gravest consequence in the lives 
of most men and women. It was a natural 
barrier for Israel keeping Philistia at bay ; 
so is it in our lives, keeping Israel, the 
good in us, from Philistia, the bad. "Were 
it not for this valley the Philistines would 
soon be upon us. 

Now, a valley is a depression. It is not 
a mountain-top, but always overshadowed 
by the heights. And the valley in Pales- 
tine was not broad and fertile, watered by 
a river, like most of our valleys. It was 
narrow and usually rocky and barren. It 
became typical of the undesirable. In figai- 
rative speech it was designated as the pass 
leading to misfortune or grief or utter, 
desolation. Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, says 
the psalmist. Isaiah speaks of the deso- 
late valleys in the same connection with 

191 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

holes in the rocks and thorns. Jeremiah 
pictures the valley of dead bodies, and 
Ezekiel preaches on the valley of dry 
bones. Just outside of Jerusalem the 
valley of Hinnom, even unto Jesus ' day, 
was the synonym for the place where the 
worm never dies and the fire is never 
quenched. 

A valley in Old Testament lands was not 
a very desirable place ; figuratively speak- 
ing, it was not a depression which a man 
would want in his life. Yet the valley- 
between saved Israel from the Philistines. 
So we have valleys in our lives; valleys 
not pleasant and fertile, but barren and 
rocky ; valleys we should rather have taken 
out of our lives or filled up. Yet these 
valleys save us from our worst selves. 

There is the valley of poverty. In this 
valley we may find the lilies growing, as 
many a poor man has cultivated the un- 
yielding soil of his poverty and made it 
blooming and fragrant. But no one will 

192 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

claim that to be poor is desirable. Have 
we ever considered, however, how much 
worse off than in their poverty many men 
would be did they control riches ? Poverty 
to them is the valley that holds their worst 
enemies at bay. Sudden wealth will ruin 
almost any man. Even one who adds to 
his world's goods gradually will increase 
his desires and demands by leaps and 
bounds. Simple tasks that kept in rhythm 
with humble toil and homely surroundings 
are apt to be smothered in patrician long- 
ings as wealth increases. There is grave 
danger that the protecting valley will be 
filled up and an even and easy way made 
for the Philistine to cross over. One of 
the most pathetic scenes in the Bible is 
Samson the strong, the sunny and light- 
hearted, in the iron grasp of the Philis- 
tines. They could never have come upon 
him had he allowed the valley, which was 
a natural configuration between his native 
place and theirs, to remain. Many a home 
13 193 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

has been disrupted, many a relationship of 
love and confidence and honor destroyed, 
many a family altar thrown down or al- 
lowed to fall as riches have increased and 
the almost inevitable social ambition has 
arisen. We remember the incident of a 
husband grown immensely wealthy, putting 
the wife of his youth away, the wife of his 
early toils and struggles, the wife who 
helped him lay the foundations of his for- 
tune, putting her away to follow the butter- 
fly of a cheapened stage, and the social 
influence that she could perhaps bring him. 
"Whatever he may have thought of himself, 
the sharpened sense of decency looked 
upon him as dishonored and defeated. 
Better the valley of poverty for him than 
the plateau of wealth over which his be- 
setting sins had such easy march. 

When we speak of poverty we use the 
word in its relative sense. Many a man 
who has sufficient income and estate to give 
his family the comforts of a home and tHe 

194 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

necessary advantages in life may regard 
himself as a poor man in relation to those 
who have hundreds of thousands and mil- 
lions. But blessed is that man if he looks 
upon his condition as the valley-between, 
holding the enemies of his best self at bay. 
Many of us would be no better than the 
immensely wealthy whom we decry were 
it not for the valley lying between our 
circumscribed conditions and their unlim- 
ited opportunity. The good we sometimes 
manifest is not always the result of virtue. 
It may be due to the valley divinely inter- 
posed between our unrestrained desires 
and their evil consequences. Moderate cir- 
cumstances, although at times they may 
be depressing, ought to give us no occa- 
sion for discouragement. As we come fully 
to understand ourselves, we shall find that 
God in withholding possessions from us 
has given competent proof that He is with 
us. 
Again, our inability to command certain 
195 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

things, entailing the necessity to work hard 
for what we get, must be looked upon as 
the friendly valley saving ns from defeat. 
Many a young man of great talents has 
allowed these to go undeveloped because 
there was no necessity for him to ask where 
the next bite to eat was coming from. As 
it is hard for a rich man to go through 
the eye of a needle, so is it hard for a tal- 
ented man to go through the narrowing 
process of development if he is relieved 
from the strain of self-support. The youth 
who is forced to work his way through 
college, instead of being dissatisfied or de- 
pressed, ought to take courage and look 
upon the toil he is put to as the friendly 
valley that is saving him from laziness or 
indifference, perhaps ; surely from regard- 
ing success in life as assured where great 
talent are in evidence. And in after life, 
when face to face with the demands of his 
profession, blessed is he if forced to earn 
his own living. For here is the valley 

196 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

that shall save him from idleness and the 
squandering of his mental and spiritual 
gifts. 

There is also the valley of misfortune. 
We look upon misfortune with a coldly 
fixed stare. We see in it nothing but an 
intense, a bitter fact. It has only a re- 
pelling look. Yet misfortune is to be 
judged entirely from a different point of 
view. It was a great misfortune for the 
man in Scripture to be blind or a par- 
alytic. This misfortune to Jesus, however, 
was a point of contact, giving Him an op- 
portunity to save such a man from a real 
calamity: a sin-diseased soul. To return 
to our figure, misfortune, if truly appre- 
ciated, may be the knowledge suddenly 
brought home to us that the Philistines 
are encamped yonder on the heights and 
that only a valley lies between us and 
annihilation. Now, I should not want to 
be understood as suggesting an easily in- 
terpreted philosophy of misfortune, or lead 

197 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

to the inference that misfortune comes as a 
punishment, and that they who do not have 
misfortunes are thus freed because they 
merit only Heaven's smile. I am merely 
suggesting that misfortune may come to 
us in the guise of a blessing, that although 
it may seem to be a valley of the shadow 
of death: death to material prosperity or 
comfort, it may be a valley of the bright- 
ness of life : life for the soul, life that gives 
opportunity for discovering and develop- 
ing spiritual resources. If there were never 
a valley of misfortune for us, we should 
be proud and high-minded. If we were 
never taken down from our exalted state 
by easy approaches, our fall would be sud- 
den and into the depths. Continued mis- 
fortune may be a series of blessings, plac- 
ing the valley between us and a worse fate. 
Circumscribed power, or limited oppor- 
tunity to exercise power, is another valley 
of salvation in the life of many a man. 
We know how jealous a man is of the 

198 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

power he possesses, how arbitrarily and 
excessively he is apt to use it, and how 
arrogant he is in danger of becoming. 
^^ There is no stronger test of a man's real 
character," said Plntarch, ^^than power 
and authority, exciting as they do every 
passion, and discovering every latent 
vice." ^^The last thing we should endow 
a man with is power," said Lincoln, ^^ be- 
cause it is the last thing he is willing to 
lay down." Our lives are laid out provi- 
dentially, therefore, when the valleys of 
necessary restraint are marked. Unbridled 
power may continue for the night, but 
sober judgment comes with the morning. 
Heads of kings and princes have been cut 
off as they have taken the bit in their 
mouths. A rule or ruin regime fails in 
both its designs and recoils upon the one 
who would establish it. For the aroused 
sense of what is just and right and best 
will sooner or later curb the rule and pre- 
vent the ruin. To save man from the exer- 

199 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

cise of unlimited power the valleys of re- 
straint are interposed. If men could be 
as strong and untrammeled in the control 
of destiny or of hidden resources as they 
desire to be, there would be neither justice 
nor judgment, toleration nor restraint. 
Even a little power is enough to turn a 
man's head. As we make a practical and 
personal application of this fact, we begin 
to see what bearing it has upon our lives. 
Were it not for the valley-between, the 
unbridled Philistines of envy, dislike, ani- 
mosity would take hold of us. We should 
crush those whom we do not favor or who 
do not favor us in the crucible of our 
power. 

In this connection we might speak of 
knowledge as power. This power man is 
ever more trying to possess. But a certain 
danger lurks in unlimited knowledge. 
There was one tree in the Garden the fruit 
of which Adam and Eve were not to eat. 
Speech was confounded when the children 
200 



II 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

of Israel undertook to build a tower high 
enough to reach the heavens and learn its 
secrets. There are some things, evidently, 
man is never to kQOW, and many others 
which he must learn only gradually. In 
this sense the silences of God are like so 
many valleys which He interposes between 
the power we not only could but would ex- 
ercise were we wise. There is much that 
the Almighty wants us to accept by faith 
and not by sight, to believe although we 
do not see. For knowledge which comes 
through faith brings the kind of joy a man 
has when he sees his ships which he sent 
across the waters on a venture return full 
of rich cargo. Of course all knowledge is 
based on faith, but because we can see so 
many things with the naked eye, we have 
a faculty of declaring that only the things 
thus seen are real. To save us from crush- 
ing defeat by materialistic forces on the 
sense plane a valley is interposed until we 
become intellectually acquainted with our- 
201 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

selves. A knowledge not based on faith 
would be equal to infinite knowledge and 
would be a weapon in man's hands where- 
with he would do himself grave injury. As 
we frankly profess ignorance of things too 
high and mighty for us we keep the Philis- 
tines in our nature at bay. 

The lesson of the valley-between can be 
carried much further and be more variedly 
illustrated. Its truth is clear. The valleys 
of God are interposed between our best 
and our worst selves to keep our enemies 
from rushing upon us. In poverty or mod- 
erate circumstances or misfortune or cir- 
cumscribed fields of action or limited op- 
portunities we can read the lesson of the 
valley-between and thank God that He 
knows us so well and cares for us so wisely. 
But there is a closing word that needs to 
be said. The valley-between kept the 
Philistines from moving upon Israel at 
once. And this suggests that the valley 
also gave the Israelites time to prepare to 

203 



THE VALLEY BETWEEN. 

meet tlie enemy. Let us note what hap- 
pened. The Philistines, in the form of 
the giant Goliath, came swaggering and 
threatening into the valley to challenge 
Israel. A champion comes forth to accept 
the challenge. He is bnt a lad, and the 
Israelites themselves are surprised at his 
audacity. Small and frail he surely is in 
comparison with the giant. Furthermore, 
he would fight with no weapon of recog- 
nized warfare. The king, in consternation, 
can not leave him to go to certain death. 
He must have the king's armor and the 
king's sword. But when these are put on 
him, and he has rattled around in them, the 
king sees they are not fit for him. So, 
with the only weapons to which he was 
used, unusual though these were, and act- 
ing only as himself, David goes down into 
the valley. Soon he stands on the huge 
hulk of the lifeless enemy. Let us not 
hesitate to use the truth conveyed in this 
story at its full face value. As we are 
203 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

fighting the foe we need go equipped only 
in onr natural strength and with weapons 
lying ready to hand. "We can take them 
from God's clear stream of truth, and hurl 
them unerringly with the arm of godly 
purpose He has given us. And we need 
never be disturbed when those who are 
used to a king's armor and sword laugh 
at our pebbles and sling. The Jews put 
a reed into Jesus' hand as a mocking sign 
of His scepter. With it He has conquered 
the world and bids us prepare for our own 
struggle in the same spirit and with the 
same strength. 



204 



XIIL 

LIFE'S COUNTEKPOISE. 

Jesus was on His way to Galilee from 
Jerusalem with His disciples. All morn- 
ing they had been climbing a steep and 
rocky hill, over the brow of which they 
had jnst come down to Jacob's Well. 
"Wearied, thirsty and hungry, Jesus rests 
at the well while His disciples go to a 
nearby village, a little off from the road 
they were traveling, to fetch some food. 
During their absence a woman from the 
village comes to draw water. At the very 
sight of her Jesus is changed from a tired 
Traveler into a ministering Savior. There 
is a counteracting force in the very nature 
of His being that causes Him to forget His 
material wants and leads Him to supply 
a spiritual need. As in mechanics a weight 
is used to balance the vibrating parts of 

305 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

macMnery upon their axis so as to cause 
them to turn freely and to require little 
power to set them in motion, so was there 
such a weight or counterpoise in the being 
of Jesus that balanced the vibrating ele- 
ments of life upon that central axis of love 
and service, which made all His forces re- 
spond to the slightest indication of a hu- 
man need and caused them to turn freely 
to its amelioration. This counterpoise in 
Jesus' nature kept in proper balance the 
material and the spiritual and enabled Him 
without neglecting the one to give the other 
its sufficient emphasis. 

His disciples could not understand this. 
Coming from the village, more tired than 
when they left their Master, they are sur- 
prised to see Him engaged in conversation 
with a woman. They wait patiently until 
the conversation is finished, and then urge 
upon Him their food. Jesus sat down and 
ate with them. But seeing their anxious 
concern for His physical welfare as well 

206 



1 



LIFE'S COUNTEEPOISE. 

as their own, and realizing how little they 
comprehended the sustaining power of the 
spiritual life, He says to them with a 
grandeur and dignity that lift His words 
quite out of the ordinary, ^^I have meat 
to eat that ye know not of." He had 
entered that lofty sphere of sympathy and 
service whence He drew strength for the 
supply of all who came to Him as well as 
for Himself. His disciples were still on 
the plain of the earthy, anxious to minister 
to their material needs. They had not dis- 
covered this counterpoise in Jesus' nature. 
There was something in His life that made 
Him transcendent above every other life 
they knew, but His secret they had not 
discerned. Jesus was in the world, that 
they knew; and that He was not of the 
world, they instinctively felt. Further 
than this, however, they did not penetrate 
into Jesus' character. Jesus alone in the 
consciousness of His inner nature knew 
the secret of His repose, that power which 

307 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

made Him appear so different from all 
other men. He had meat to eat the world 
knew not of. In the wilderness, when con- 
fronted by the tempter, He stood triumph- 
ant before him because of the meat which 
the tempter knew not. In the fierce con- 
flicts of His life, when assailed by friend 
or foe alike, when even His own house- 
hold failed to understand Him and said 
He was beside Himself, He walked in the 
tranquillity of peace, for He had meat to 
eat they knew not of. During the agoniz- 
ing passion in Gethsemane and the excruci- 
ating pain on Golgotha He proved to the 
world the sustaining power of the meat 
which the world knew not of. In life and 
death, in resurrection and exaltation Jesus 
revealed the strength and the stimulus of 
that heavenly manna on which He con- 
stantly fed. ^^I have meat to eat that ye 
know not of.'' 

Here was the counterpoise that perfectly 
adjusted Jesus to His life, that made the 

208 



LIFE'S COUNTERPOISE. 

spiritual counteract the material, that con- 
trolled all the forces of His being so that 
they responded to the purpose of His life 
and ministry. Here we face so significant 
a feature in Jesus' nature that we are apt 
to forget He was human and lay stress 
only on the fact that He was divine. This 
counterpoise in Jesus' life, however, was 
not due primarily to His divinity, but to 
His humanity. We are not here in the 
presence of something mysterious, some- 
thing that can be explained only on the 
ground of the superhuman, and which, 
therefore, as we explain it, we must at- 
tribute to Jesus a nature essentially dif- 
ferent from our own. Jesus in this in- 
stance was making no claim in regard to 
His peculiar divinity. He was revealing 
to His disciples His common humanity. 
^^I have meat to eat that ye know not of, 
not because I am divine and you are hu- 
man, but because I understand true hu- 
manity and you have not as yet discov- 
^^ 209 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

ered its essence.'' Let ns not forget that 
Jesus makes His strongest appeal to man, 
not on the gronnd of His divinity, bnt on 
the gronnd of His hnmanity. For He came 
into the world as a man, born of a human 
mother, in order to reveal man to man, in 
order to show man his possibilities, to tell 
him that there is lodged within him a 
divine element that is his true, his real 
self; to urge him to discover this element 
in his own soul and to develop it in all 
its expanding powers, until man should 
live and move and have his being in God. 
For true humanity is real divinity. JesuS 
was such a Man as God at the creation 
intended all men to be. He held a per- 
fect relation both to God and man, not be- 
cause He lived supernaturally, but because 
He lived naturally, because He held a per- 
fect counterpoise between the material and 
the spiritual, between earth and heaven. 
By being truly human. He was also truly 
divine. 

210 



I 



LIFE'S COUNTEEPOISE. 

This is the overmastering significance of 
Jesus ' revelation. He put it in the power 
of every man to discover that he is a child 
of God as well as a son of man. Hence 
He called Himself not God, but the Son of 
God, and nrged the children of men 
to be sons of God, for nnto that end 
were they born. Thus revealing Himself, 
Jesus towers above all mankind in the sub- 
limity of His human nature. So stupen- 
dous is this fact that if we really can com- 
prehend it we shall see in the very human- 
ity of Jesus His divinity. 

As Jesus was on the plane of the human 
when He spoke to His disciples and taught 
the multitude. He did not bring any mes- 
sage too difficult for man to comprehend 
or set man any task which he could not 
fulfill. ^^I have meat to eat that ye know 
not of,'' He said, but He did not imply, 
*^You can never know of this meat." He 
implied the very opposite, and in this sense 
Jesus' words were a rebuke to His dis- 
211 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ciples, for the least physical fatigue and 
hunger threw them down on the plane of 
the material and blunted their suscepti- 
bilities to the spiritual. The deeper the 
thought that is comprehended, the keener 
is the medium of comprehension. Where 
the mind fails to grasp an idea it is either 
not yet active or it is still undeveloped. 
The latter was the situation of the dis- 
ciples, and they therefore gave a secondary 
meaning to Jesus' words, ^^I have meat to 
eat that ye know not of," for they looked 
at each other in amazement and said: 
^^What is He talking about? Has any one 
brought Him something to eat?" Note the 
contrast in Jesus. Spirit was answering 
to Spirit, Spirit was feeding upon Spirit 
and accomplishing the work of Spirit. In 
the disciples the order was reversed. It 
was spirit answering to and serving mat- 
ter, the body, the external world, the 
physical wants and human pleasures of 
man. 

313 



LIFE'S COUNTERPOISE. 

It took the disciples a long time to im- 
derstand Jesus' point of view, to see God 
in the world everywhere about them as 
Jesus revealed Him, to appreciate that the 
essence, the reality of the material world 
is the spiritual. Jesus ministering to them 
in His sublime humanity showed them that 
to be really human man can not depend 
alone on physical bread and meat for his 
sustenance. This is the mere sensual, that 
which ministers to the animal in man. 
Man was not created as the brute beast, 
with his eyes and mouth turned to the 
ground. He has an upward look, an aspi- 
ration that lifts him above the earth to 
that which is spiritual, to that which the 
physical eye and ear and tongue can 
neither see nor hear nor taste, but which 
only the soul of man can grasp and enjoy. 
As man must develop from the lower to 
the higher, so must he learn how to de- 
tach himself from the material and live 
in the spiritual. 

213 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

It is difficult for us to realize this. The 
spirituality, we say, of Jesus' nature is 
to be accounted for on the ground of His 
di^dnity. Human beings can not expect to 
reach such an exalted state. We reason 
thus because we are so chained to the ma- 
terial that we can not appreciate the dom- 
inance of the spiritual in our lives. It is 
like going into a dense forest where we 
can see only trees and leaves, but no sky 
overhead and only now and then realize 
that the sun is somewhere as we see its 
rays glinting through the gloom. And yet 
the highest sweep of our natures is in the 
spiritual. The best that we enjoy in life 
is found there. Our real pleasures swing 
loose from their material en\dronment, our 
souls speak to and hear other souls, we 
have companionship and consolation with 
our friends, whether they be human beings 
or printed books. TVTien all other help or 
comfort fails us, we are nourished on the 
food that the world knows not of. 

214 



LIFE'S COUNTEEPOISE. 

Jesus shows us this secret of strength, 
this counterpoise of life. As He lived, He 
gives us hope to live also. It is possible, 
we feel, to detach ourselves from the ma- 
terial and live in the spiritual. Paul and 
Augustine, Francis of Assisi, and Martin 
Luther, John Henry Newman, and Phillips 
Brooks show us that this is possible. 
These men all had meat to eat the world 
knew not of. They grew strong thereon: 
strong in repose and composure, strong 
in faith and conviction, strong in fidelity 
to duty that sent them forth in calm and 
tranquil, but confident, adherence to right- 
eous purpose. ^^My meat is to do the will 
of Him that sent Me and to accomplish 
His work.'' 

While history's estimate of the work and 
worth of such men may vary, it can not 
rob them of that glory which crowns them 
as real men. For they discovered the es- 
sence of humanity. Like their Master, the 
counterpoise of life to them was that spir- 

215 



THE ASSUEAXCE OF FAITH. 

itnal food and force that fitted them for 
life in the higher altitude of being and re- 
leased them from the petty cares and trials 
of life. How truly Xewman, e. g., could 
say to his virulent accuser, who would rob 
him of all that any man can truly own in 
this world — ^his character, ^'I have meat 
to eat that you know not of." He had his 
sorrows, and they were pangs of bitterness, 
but he also had his joys, and they were 
precious morsels. He could take his secret 
place at the table spread by his Lord and 
eat of that heavenly food with a thank- 
fulness too deeiD for words. And how 
many other men and women like him do 
we know in history? 

But we need not look only to great 
careers for testimony of this spiritual 
nourishment that feeds the soul. Look 
into our own hearts and lives. Have we 
not had those moments when we seemed 
to have been born under a cloud and all 
was dark about us and our souls were 

216 



LIFE'S COUNTEEPOISE. 

racked with doubt and our brains reeled 
in confusion, and we were ready to say, 
^^What is the use; why should we try to 
rise above our surroundings, we can not 
better them any wayf Or have we not 
been tempted to run away from our prob- 
lems and perplexities and let others solve 
them? Have we not had such moments, 
and have we not then heard the voice of 
our truer selves, our real humanity, say, 
^^Why magnify your troubles, your trials; 
you have meat to eat that they know not 
of?" And has that not been a supreme 
moment of triumph, a moment of calm as- 
surance and satisfaction, when we could 
forget fatigue and hunger and the weari- 
some noises of the world and the conflict- 
ing voices that shriek and howl about us. 
And we have turned to our duty, plain 
and commonplace though it was, and with 
calm serenity have answered those who 
feared we were starving because we did 
not care for the food they urged us to 
217 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

eat, ^^We have meat to eat that yon know 
not of." And when they have looked on 
in surprise or even remonstrance at our 
attitude, we have found a deeper joy in 
being able to say to them, '^Know ye not 
that our meat is to do the will of Him that 
sent us and to accomplish His work?" 

Happy is the man, the woman, who can 
look upon such moments of life and say, 
^^I have meat to eat that ye know not of." 
This is the food that gives us strength for 
our highest duty, that enables the business 
man in the sharp competition of trade to 
keep his hands clean and go through life 
in a happy, even although it may be a 
humble, sphere. This is the food that 
strengthens the lawyer, the judge, the 
statesman to seek truth and pursue it, to 
advocate honesty, to decide righteously, to 
legislate soberly and well. This is the food 
that strengthens the physician and the 
teacher to ameliorate suffering and lessen 
ignorance, to help weakened bodies and en- 

218 




LIFE'S COUNTERPOISE. 

courage struggiing minds with the spirit 
of the great Teacher and Physician who 
came to give life and to give it more 
abundantly. This is the food that strength- 
ens the artisan, the mechanic, the salesman, 
every one who toils with his hands and 
brain, to go forth to his labor with joy 
and continue thereat in peace. This is the 
food that strengthens the mother to give 
her life for her children, to make their 
home a heavenly abiding place. ^^I have 
meat to eat that ye know not of." Meat 
that transforms the home, the school, the 
Church, the mart, the State, that makes 
of them all powerful institutions for right- 
eousness, that declares in no uncertain tone 
that the Kingdom of God is at hand; the 
food that changes man from the likeness 
of an animal into the image of his God. 

^^I have meat to eat that ye know not 
of." To be able to say this, to look with 
calm composure upon the material world 
from our abiding place in the spiritual, 

219 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

to meet sorrow and joy, success and fail- 
ure, the good-will of our friends, the harsh 
criticism of our foes, because we have 
found life 's counterpoise ; this is that high 
estate of human existence that makes life 
truly divine, for it partakes of that Spirit 
which God sent into this world to quicken 
and save it. 



220 



xrv. 

AND ANOTHEE SHALL GIKD THEE. 

Theee times Jesns says to Simon Peter: 
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? 
Twice Peter answers: Yea, Lord, Thou 
knowest that I love Thee. And Jesus re- 
plies. Feed My sheep. The third time 
Peter is more assertive: Lord, Thou 
knowest all things. Thou knowest that I 
love Thee. Jesus says again. Feed My 
sheep. He then adds: Verily, verily, I 
say unto thee: When thou wast young 
thou girdest thyself and walkedst whither 
thou wouldest, but when thou shalt be old, 
thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and an- 
other shall gird thee and lead thee whither 
thou wouldest not. ^^Feed My sheep.'' 
^^ Another shall gird thee." A command 
on the one hand to go and do. A reminder 
221 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

on the other of his inability to do. Why, 
we may ask, should Jesus give the com- 
mand thrice repeated, and then seemingly 
take the very heart out of Peter by telling 
him he would soon be useless, another 
would gird him and lead him whither he 
would not go? 

Did Jesus mistrust Peter? Ah, no! He 
was teaching him a lesson. Peter was in 
the exuberance of a new experience. His 
soul was shot through with the wonderful 
power of Christ's gospel. To him, as to 
St. Paul later, it was Jesus crucified and 
risen from the dead. Here was a message 
that would batter down the armed opposi- 
tion to God's truth more surely than the 
battering ram of a Eoman cohort would 
break the door of a besieged city. Jesus 
sees Peter's enthusiasm and knows his 
honesty of purpose. But it is the enthusi- 
asm of an inexperienced man on the very 
threshold of his career with a confidence 
of power so strong that its very strength 

222 



AND ANOTHEE SHALL GIED THEE. 

was a danger. Peter might be carried 
away by his enthusiasm and miss the goal 
of his endeavors; he might lose himself 
in the abyss of over self-estimation. So 
Jesus warns him. ^^Now thou art strong; 
thou canst draw tight thy girdle about thee, 
and tuck in the folds of thy garment and 
go forth untrammeled to journey or toil. 
But remember, the days must come when 
thou shalt stretch forth thy hand and an- 
other shall gird thee. So learn to submit 
now.'' 

This is the lesson Jesus would teach us. 
So far canst thou go and no further. We 
must lean on others, we must lean on An- 
other. Our strength to do will grow out 
of our willingness to submit. This is life's 
lesson. It is not easily learned. Like many 
another lesson, it is spurned or slighted 
at the very time we ought to learn it. 
Youth wants to gird itself. The child 
grows in its own estimation the moment 
it is able to lace its shoes without assist- 
223 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

ance. This is something to talk about. 
The chasm between helpless babyhood and 
the confidence of yonth has been bridged. 
So the boy girds himself and walks whither 
he wonld. From the point of lacing his 
shoes he passes by quick strides to that 
of determining his will and his well-being. 
.The counsel of parents and teachers is well 
intentioned, but in extremely bad taste 
when directed at a youth who can gird him- 
self. He will choose his books, he will 
choose his companions, he will choose his 
occupations. Thus girding himself, by the 
irony of fate he is drawn to minds and 
characters which have likewise girded 
themselves and walked whither they would. 
It is a big thing to be the chum of a boy 
who has an utter contempt for restraint. 
And a little later he fairly bristles with 
importance as he turns the pages of the 
unfortunates who have lost their bearings 
and repudiated the faiths of their mothers. 
He is not able to understand the circum- 

224: 



AND ANOTHER SHALL GIRD THEE. 

stances or currents which drove these men 
out to the open sea adrift in a small boat 
without compass or rudder and no knowl- 
edge of the shore ; but only he is unaware 
of his inability. He girds himself and 
grows bigger and more daring as he abso- 
lutely despises the thought of dependence 
and accountability. Fundamental truths! 
What are they? Who can determine them? 
On a bright night he will look into the 
starry heavens and delight to shock his 
mates with the assertion of his disbelief in 
God. He will quote disconnected verses 
from the Book of Ecclesiastes, the meaning 
of which he does not understand, but which 
on the surface seem to give him Biblical 
warrant for repudiating the being of God 
and His intimate relations to this world. 
His room-mate who would dare to kneel 
beside his bed at night, as he kneeled be- 
side his mother's knee when a child, and 
pray to the Unseen Presence, he would 
ridicule or laugh to scorn. What a delu- 
^' 225 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

sion is prayer! No greater act of self- 
deception is conceivable. To siicli a one, 
would he but hear, the very wings of the 
wind bear the warning, ^^ Another shall 
gird thee ! ' ' Would he but look he would 
see painted across the signboards of na- 
ture and of history the words, ^'And an- 
other shall gird thee ! ' ' 

Or there is the youth full of healthy 
fun and serious ambition. We look to him 
in the fondness of hope. We admire his 
powers of intellect and will. He is a pos- 
sibility. The whole illimitable world of 
mind and matter is before him. We see 
in him an evidence of the eternal. We 
dare set no bounds to what he may achieve. 
We remember, not without some feeling 
of regret, that what we hoped in our youth 
to accomplish has never been realized. 
But none of us will be hardy enough to 
say that because our ideals were not 
reached he also must fail. We rather say 
our own powers were limited. We look 
226 



AND ANOTHER SHALL GIED THEE. 

at him in possession of all the vigor of 
youthful endowment and with life before 
him, and feel there is a far better career 
for him than there was for us. And he, 
too, has something of this same feeling. 
The warm blood courses through his veins ; 
his heart tingles with the desire to get up 
and do. Who knows but that he can fill 
the place which hitherto no man could 
reach? Has he not vitality of muscle and 
mind? Is there not something tugging 
away at his heart-strings pulling him on- 
ward? Is he not able to gird himself and 
walk forward untrammeled? Thus he 
reasons, for he is looking through the field- 
glass of youth. And this brings every- 
thing nearer to him. He looks in at the 
small end of his inexperience and the world 
is magnified. The mountain-top he would 
reach is brought within arm's length and 
he can almost talk with the gods who in- 
habit that rarified region. But as he toys 
with this glass he finds himself uncon- 

227 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

sciously turning it around. He looks in at 
the big end and lie becomes aware that 
the world is receding from him. The hills 
are still clear, but how much higher are 
they now, and farther away! And how 
deep the valleys through which he must 
patiently plod before he can begin the 
ascent! The maturer man looks at life 
through the big end of his experience. And 
his world is never magnified. While it 
may seem to have become more reduced in 
size than it is in fact, still he can not escape 
the knowledge that his world and the actual 
world are removed by leagues of space 
which it will not be his to cross. He will 
begin to see the bigness of the world and 
the littleness of himself. He will realize 
that the world is not dependent upon him ; 
that his presence here is as a footprint on 
the sand which the next roll of the ocean 
will forever wash out, or as a drop of rain 
which falls into the river. In the waves 
and in the rain he will hear the voice of 

328 



AND ANOTHER SHALL GIRD THEE. 

the inevitable, ^^And another shall gird 
thee." With many other earnest souls, he 
will be driven to ask, ^^What am I?" And 
the answer will be : 

*'An infant crying in the night; 
An infant crying for the light; 
And with no language but a cry." 

In the buoyancy of youth and of inex- 
perience we think we are girding ourselves 
and walking whither we would. But we 
need only to look within to see that we 
must stretch out our hands and be girded. 
Our thoughts, whose are they? Our own? 
Yes, if we have really thought them. But 
our own only in the sense that the air we 
breathe is our own. This world would 
be a vacuum if it depended upon any power 
of man to fill it with air. The mind of 
man would be vacuous if it depended upon 
his ability to supply it with the materials 
of thought. Our lungs draw in the air 
from the outside and the machinery of our 

229 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

bodies is kept in motion. The body is as 
dependent npon air as the boiler is upon 
water. So our minds take from the out- 
side world the materials for thought. Na- 
ture kindly girds us and gives us the power 
to go forward and think according to the 
strength of our minds. Only thus is 
thought possible. 

Then, there is the element of time. He 
who would say, ^^Go to, I will gird myself 
and be supreme," must reckon with the 
moments and the hours. Who can walk or 
run against time? Who can sit still in 
spite of time? He who can stay its flight 
can control the ebb and flow of the tides. 
^^I returned and saw under the sun that 
the race is not to the swift, nor the battle 
to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, 
nor yet riches to men of understanding, 
nor yet favor to men of skill; but time 
and chance happeneth to them all. ' ' Here 
the preacher would leave us in the eternally 
grinding mill of time, perchance to be 

230 



AND ANOTHEE SHALL GIED THEE. 

ground fine. But the psalmist fastening 
upon the same truth, turns away from self 
and surroundings to Him who reels off 
the minutes of the day, and hence who 
controls time and chance, and exclaims, 
^^My times are in Thy hands; deliver me.'' 
As the tragedy rises step by step until 
it overwhelms him in its climax, Hamlet 
remarks, ^^The rest is silence." We read 
a book, we are led on from scene to scene, 
we seem actually to live the life of the 
novel, we are anxious to know the out- 
come, we read the last sentence, ' ' The rest 
is silence. ' ' We can imagine what we will 
about the further life of the people who 
spoke and acted in the book; but so far 
as the author is concerned, the rest is si- 
lence. The last moment of our school days 
has come. We remember the exercises, 
the applause, the awarding of the diplomas, 
the rest is silence. No more will those days 
speak for us. The last hours of our col- 
lege course have arrived. Little by little 

231 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

the moments register the events of our 
university life. The dying strains of the 
music are hushed, the last farewells spoken, 
we hold diplomas in our hands, but the rest 
is silence. We look not into the past with 
its multitude of voices; we look into the 
future and as yet no voice speaks. So 
through life we go. In the springtime of 
youth we would gird ourselves and go 
whither we would, and we feel confident we 
can; in the strength of manhood we would 
still gird ourselves and go whither we 
would, but we are learning how to stretch 
forth our hands and let another gird us 
and lead whither we would not; in the 
hallowed serenity of old age we know our 
lesson, we stretch forth our hands will- 
ingly to be girded by another, we gladly, 
trustingly follow whithersoever He leadeth. 
"We have seen our friend grow in the 
beauty of submission. In the firmness of 
his faith his face at times seemed to be 
transfigured. We remember his sturdy 

232 



AND ANOTHER SHALL GIED THEE. 

walk, Ms strong voice as it led us to the 
tlirone of God. We saw him grow feeble, 
enter the sanctuary, feel his way trem- 
blingly to his seat. Then we saw him borne 
in by loving hands; we heard the tender 
words spoken in affectionate tribute, we 
looked a last time upon his face, we saw 
him lowered beneath the sod, we heard the 
words, ^^ Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes 
to ashes," and the rest was silence. 
^^When thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch 
forth thy hands, and another shall gird 
thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest 
not." But He who said these words also 
said, ^^Let not your heart be troubled; 
I go to prepare a place for you." 

The block of marble is dug out of the 
earth and is set before the artist. In it 
he sees the statue of an angel. With coarse 
tools and heavy mallets and powerful 
strokes his apprentice will knock off great 
pieces as the master has directed until the 
crude form of the statue stands out. But 
233 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 

no further can the novice go. It is the 
artist with fine tools and delicate strokes 
who carefully, tenderly, chisels out and 
smoothes over until the very soul of the 
angel speaks. So is man detached and set 
down among his fellows. God sees the an- 
gel in him. But he needs the bold, strong, 
hard strokes of the world to bring out the 
semblance of his form. If he remained at 
its mercy, however, he would be ruined as 
surely as the statue would be marred under 
the heavy and bungling strokes of the ap- 
prentice. He needs to come under the 
hands of the artist, for it is not his ex- 
ternal form, but his eternal being that is 
to be brought out. So gently and surely 
will the Master work. No blow falls in 
vain or needlessly. No stroke is misplaced. 
Under His hand the soul steps forth, ready 
for its place in the heavenly palace, and 
overcome with gratitude and love, ex- 
claims, ^^Thy gentleness hath made me 
great.'' 

234 



AND ANOTHEE SHALL GIED THEE. 

^^ Another shall gird thee." Will we 
resist? Then the blows will fall heavy 
and fast and onr lives will be hard and 
unlovely. ^^ Another shall gird thee.'^ 
Will we submit? Then onr strength, onr 
real selves, the divine that is in ns, will 
gently but skillfully be brought out, we 
may be led whither we would not, but it 
will be the Master who leads. I am the 
Way. My yoke is easy and My burden 
is light. Follow Me. 



235 



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